AT   LOS  ANGELES 


<F 


{ 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN 
PHILOSOPHY 


IN  THE  FORM  OF  LECTURES 


BY 


JOSIAH   $OYCE,  PH.  D. 

PROFESSOR   Or  THK    HISTORY  OF   PHILOSOPHY 
IN   HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 


BOSTON   AND    NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN   COMPANY 

fltoer?ibe  prcjjs  Cambridge 


17    5 


COPYRIGHT,  I85>2,  BY  JOSIAB  ROYCE 
COPYRIGHT,  1930,  BY  KATHARINE  HEAD  ROYCE 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


THIRTY-SECOND  IMPRESSION,  MARCH,  1928 


tEfjf  Rt&t  csibt  f)rt8« 

CAMBRIDGE  •  MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.S.A. 


Education 
-p»         Library 

\ 


TO  MY  FRIEND 

<S5rap  fflffilarli  Dorr 

I  GRATEFULLY  DEDICATE  THIS  BOOK 

AS  A  TOKEN  OF  AFFECTION  AND  VENERATION 

IN   RECOGNITION  OF  THE  WISE  COUNSEL 

THAT    SUGGESTED    ITS    PREPARATION 

AND  OF  THE  THOUGHTFUL  ADVICE 

THAT  ACCOMPANIED  AND  AIDED 

ITS  GROWTH 


PREFACE. 


THE  friend  to  whom  I  have  dedicated  this  book  asked 
me,  a  little  more  than  two  years  ago,  for  some  account 
of  the  more  significant  spiritual  possessions  of  a  few 
prominent  modern  thinkers.  I  was  to  tell  what  I  could 
about  these  possessions  in  comparatively  brief  and  un- 
technical  fashion.  With  some  misgivings  as  to  my  right 
and  many  misgivings  as  to  my  power  to  set  forth  any 
portion  of  the  content  of  modern  philosophy  in  the  com- 
pass of  a  few  short  lectures,  I  still  undertook  the  task, 
and  soon  found  it  unexpectedly  absorbing.  The  com- 
pany of  friends  for  whom  I  was  to  prepare  my  lectures 
proved  to  be  more  numerous  than  I  had  foreseen ;  the 
undertaking  became  more  elaborate  and  thorough-going 
than  I  had  any  way  intended  ;  and  the  exceeding  kindli- 
ness and  earnestness  of  my  hearers  called  erelong  for  a 
response  that  taxed  all  my  poor  wit  to  the  utmost.  My 
lectures  once  finished  in  their  first  form,  under  the 
general  title  "  Representative  Modern  Thinkers  and 
Problems,"  I  was  asked  to  read  them  yet  again,  before 
another  equally  cordial  and  stimulating  company  in 
another  city.  The  re-reading  suggested,  of  course,  much 
revision.  In  the  following  year  I  again  offered  my 
papers,  partly  rewritten  and  much  enlarged,  to  the 
members  of  Harvard  University,  as  public  evening  leo« 


VI  PREFACE. 

tures.  Still  other  opportunities  to  present  all  or  part  of 
the  same  material  to  various  audiences  caused  me  to  get 
considerable  critical  aid.  I  then  resolved  to  give  the 
whole  discussion  a  final  form. 

This  volume  contains,  therefore,  an  essay,  in  the  shape 
of  a  series  of  lectures,  and  with  a  twofold  object.  On 
the  one  hand  my  essay  deals  not  so  much  with  the 
minuter  details  as  with  the  connections,  the  linkages, 
the  general  growth,  of  modern  philosophical  thought 
since  the  seventeenth  century.  On  the  other  hand  my 
purpose  is  constructive  as  well  as  expository.  I  have 
my  own  philosophical  creed,  —  a  growing  and  still  ele- 
mentary one,  indeed ;  and  this  creed  has  been  strongly 
suggested  to  me  by  what  I  know  of  the  progress  and 
outcome  of  modern  thought.  What  I  have  seen  I  delight 
to  try  to  suggest.  And  the  book  is  the  product  of  my 
delight,  and  the  embodiment  of  my  efforts  at  suggestion. 

On  the  other  hand,  these  studies  are  not  mere  frag- 
ments, but  are  bound  together  by  a  single  principal  idea, 
this  idea  being  the  one  that  seems  to  me  to  embody  the 
true  spirit  of  modern  philosophy,  —  the  doctrine  concern- 
ing the  world  which,  amidst  all  our  vast  ignorance  of 
nature  and  of  destiny,  we  still  have  a  right  to  call,  in  its 
main  and  simple  outlines,  a  sure  possession  of  human 
thought.  What  this  doctrine  is  I  have  already  had  occa- 
sion to  suggest  in  the  more  positive  chapters  of  my  book 
called  "  The  Eeligious  Aspect  of  Philosophy."  To  the 
arguments  of  that  work,  particularly  to  the  chapters 
therein  entitled  "The  Possibility  of  Error"  and  "The 
Eeligious  Insight"  (the  first  containing  a  metaphysical 
discussion  of  the  proof  of  the  main  thesis  of  Objective 
Idealism,  the  other  a  general  sketch  of  certain  couse- 


PREFACE.  Vll 

qnences  of  this  thesis),  I  must  refer  such  readers  as  may 
desire  a  fuller  acquaintance  with  some  matters  of  funda- 
mental importance  which  the  present  study,  in  view  of  its 
limitations,  will  leave  more  or  less  incomplete.  But  these 
lectures  have  their  own  unity,  are  intended  to  be  under- 
stood by  themselves,  represent,  I  hope,  a  considerable 
advance  in  the  organization  of  the  philosophical  doctrine 
which  was  set  forth  in  the  former  book,  and  meanwhile 
have  the  decided  advantage  which  the  historical  fashion 
of  philosophizing  always  possesses  as  against  the  dialec- 
tical fashion. 

Our  common  dependence  upon  the  history  of  thought 
for  all  our  reflective  undertakings  is  unquestionable. 
Our  best  originality,  if  we  ever  get  any  originality,  must 
spring  from  this  very  dependence.  Doctrines  of  genu- 
inely revolutionary  significance  are  rare  indeed  in  the 
history  of  speculation,  and  they  ought  to  be  so.  Of 
lesser  surprises,  of  marvels,  of  beautifully  novel  insights, 
all  the  greater  highways  of  speculation  are  full;  and 
yet  most  of  the  marvels  are  only  such  in  so  far  as  they 
are  set  off  upon  a  very  large  background  of  the  histori- 
cally familiar.  Only  a  very  few  tijnes  in  the  history  of 
thought  is  the  continuity  of  the  evolution  distinctly 
broken.  The  novelties  are  elsewhere  only  relative,  and 
get  their  very  value  from  the  fact  that  they  are  so. 

For  us  to-day,  after  so  many  centuries  of  philosophy, 
the  necessity  of  keeping  in  mind  our  relation  to  earlier 
thought  is  peculiarly  pressing,  and  the  neglect  (or  mis- 
understanding) of  those  historical  relations  is  peculiarly 
disastrous.  Mere  eclecticism  in  philosophy  is  of  course 
worthless.  But  to  condemn  the  past,  as  full  of  error  and 
delusion,  and  then  to  set  forth  what  we  imagine  to  be  our 


Vlll  PREFACE. 

own  fundamentally  significant  and  wholly  new  methods 
in  philosophy,  is  a  procedure  that  in  general  can  have  but 
one  ending.  We,  then,  but  unwittingly  transplant  old 
growths  to  new  soil,  seeing  not  how  old  the  growths  are, 
and  considering  only  the  newness  of  the  garden  that  we 
have  planned.  But  the  new  soil  is  of  necessity  lacking  in 
the  ancient  wealth  and  depth,  and  the  transplanted  doc- 
trines take  little  root.  Synthesis  and  critical  re-organi- 
zation of  the  truths  furnished  us  by  the  past,  in  the  light 
of  present  science,  is  not  mere  eclecticism,  and  leaves 
ample  room  for  healthy  originality.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  is  so  easy  to  feel  a  train  of  philosophical  thought  to  be 
wholly  new,  merely  because  we  have  eagerly  thought  it 
out,  and  have  been  all  the  while  unaware  of  our  actual 
philosophical  environment  and  atmosphere.  And  yet  this 
subjective  sensation  of  originality,  —  to  what  unnecessary 
cares,  to  what  disappointments  may  it  not  in  the  end 
lead  us ! 

Such  misadventures,  I,  for  my  part,  am  minded  to 
avoid  by  remaining  fully  aware  of  my  historical  relations. 
Faithfulness  to  history  is  the  beginning  of  creative  wis- 
dom. I  love  the  latter,  and  want  to  get  it.  To  that  end, 
however,  I  cultivate  the  former. 

The  present  philosophical  situation  in  this  country 
seems  to  be  peculiarly  favorable  to  such  efforts.  Two 
philosophical  branches  are  especially  prospering  to-day 
in  our  Universities,  the  study  of  Empirical  Psychology, 
and  the  study  of  the  History  of  Philosophy.  I  believe 
for  my  own  part  that  these  two  pursuits  ought  to  flourish 
and  will  flourish  together,  and  that  they  will  lead  to  very 
important  constructive  work.  I  see  no  just  opposition 
of  spirit  between  them. 


PREFACE.  IX 

• 

A  student  of  philosophy,  who  is  also  occasionally  a 
critic  of  his  living  fellow-students,  is  of  necessity  glad  to 
have  applied  to  his  own  work  the  same  tests  that  he  would 
apply  to  the  work  of  others,  and  severer  tests,  too,  than 
he  would  have  wit  to  apply.  Where  grave  errors  of  schol- 
arship or  profound  misunderstandings  of  my  historical 
relations  mar  my  work,  I  desire  to  have  the  fact  pointed 
out  with  the  utmost  definiteness  of  speech.  For  I  bring 
no  gold  with  me  unless  some  portion  of  my  work  can 
bear  the  test  of  the  most  fiery  trial.  Let  the  dross  suffer. 
I  shall  never  regret  the  loss  of  it,  nor  feel  aggrieved  at 
the  flames.  I  distinguish  very  easily  between  a  student's 
person  and  his  teaching.  Let  the  man  be  respected  accord- 
ing as  he  has  meant  well,  and  has  labored  with  sincere 
devotion.  I  myself  have  never  had  occasion  to  criticise 
any  philosophical  writer  of  whom  this  could  not  be  sin- 
cerely said.  But  let  the  teaching  be  tried  wholly  without 
mercy,  whether  meant  well  or  not.  Were  we,  indeed,  as 
negative  critics  in  philosophy,  assuming  the  right  to  be 
judges  of  the  hearts  and  of  the  inner  and  personal  merits 
of  our  living  philosophical  opponents  instead  of  estimat- 
ing, as  we  do  in  such  cases,  their  published  work,  I,  for 
my  part,  remembering  my  own  weakness  and  personal 
unworthiness,  should  be  the  first  to  echo,  just  as  even 
now  I  do  in  the  presence  of  God  and  man,  the  words  of 
my  departed  friend,  whose  verses  entitled  "The  Fool's 
Prayer  "  I  have  quoted  in  my  closing  lecture.  But  the 
criticism  of  the  public  deeds  of  scholarship,  offered  in  the 
public  service,  is  wholly  independent  of  our  personal  fond- 
ness for  a  man,  and  involves  no  desire  for  other  than 
intellectual  contest  with  him.  Therefore,  such  criticism, 


X  PREFACE. 

whenever  its  wholly  objective  motive  is  understood,  does 
well  to  be  merciless. 

It  is  perhaps  tedious,  I  am  sure  that  I  wish  it  were 
quite  needless,  to  set  forth  here  such  obvious  truisms  as 
these.  Most  readers,  indeed,  will  have  them  already  in 
mind.  For  such  they  are  not  intended. 

However  severe  or  kindly  our  critics,  it  is  all  the  while 
true  that  a  book  must  be  judged  by  what  it  undertakes, 
and  that  this  essay  must,  of  course,  have  and  confess 
the  defects  of  its  qualities.  I  have  tried,  accordingly, 
throughout  my  text,  to  avoid  raising  false  expectations. 
The  reader  will,  indeed,  find  here  many  things  that  at  the 
outset  he  does  not  expect.  I  hope  that  some  of  these 
things  will  be  a  pleasing  surprise  to  him.  But  in  no  case 
will  he  either  expect  or  find  technical  completeness.  To 
be  sure,  the  later  papers  are  more  elaborate  than  the  ear- 
lier ones ;  partly  because  I  have  added  to  my  text  many 
passages  which  were  not  read  at  all  in  my  original  lec- 
tures ;  partly  because  I  have  expected  my  hearers  and 
readers  to  grow  a  little  in  reflective  patience  as  they  be- 
came used  to  the  argument. 

I  may  add  a  few  special  observations  on  various  of 
the  individual  lectures.  The  traditional  beginning  of  the 
story  of  modern  thought  with  the  Cartesian  cogito  ergo 
sum  I  have  not  employed,  because  it  is  almost  universal 
in  the  text-books,  and  because,  meanwhile,  in  its  usual 
context,  it  produces,  despite  its  literal  accuracy,  a  very 
misleading  impression.  The  seventeenth  century  was  not 
on  the  whole  a  period  of  subjectivism,  but  the  very  re- 
verse. Descartes  was  himself  best  known  to  his  contem- 
poraries, not  for  his  theory  of  knowledge,  but  for  his 
physical  and  metaphysical  system.  Of  the  philosophical 


PREFACE.  xi 

Absolutism  of  the  century  Spinoza  is  meanwhile  the  best, 
because  the  extremest  representative.  Interested  as  I 
here  am  in  the  broad  outlines  and  not  in  the  details, 
I  have,  therefore,  chosen  to  illustrate  the  general  attitude 
of  the  time  towards  the  deepest  problems  of  the  spirit  by 
this  extreme  but  still  typical  case  of  Spinoza,  and  to  leave 
the  rest  to  a  brief  general  sketch.  In  the  superficial 
glance  over  the  period  from  Spinoza  to  Kant  I  have 
omitted  Leibnitz  altogether,  and  I  feel  this  to  be  the  most 
serious  error  of  mere  omission  in  my  whole  book.  Yet 
the  defect  proved  to  be  inevitable,  in  view  of  my  space 
and  time  limitations. 

With  the  lecture  on  Kant  begins  a  more  careful  study 
of  doctrine.  The  modern  Kant-philology  has  here  been 
of  indispensable  service  to  me,  so  far  as  I  have  been  able 
to  follow  it.  Yet  I  have  tried  to  write  my  own  personal 
impression  of  Kant  himself  as  plainly  as  I  could.  To 
Professors  Vaihinger  and  Benno  Erdmann  every  student 
of  Kant  owes  a  debt  which,  as  I  hope,  I  have  not  obscured 
for  my  readers  by  my  playful  remarks  on  pages  104-105. 
In  the  later  historical  lectures  I  have  been  unable  to  make 
sufficient  acknowledgement  of  numerous  literary  obliga- 
tions. I  feel  such  most  of  all  to  Julian  Schmidt,  to  Pro- 
fessor Haym,  to  Dr.  Hutchinson  Stirling,  to  Professors 
Windelband,  Falckenberg,  and  J.  E.  Erdmann,  to  Pro- 
fessor Edward  Caird,  and  to  Principal  Caird.  Of  foot- 
notes I  have  been  permitted  by  my  plan  to  make  only 
very  scanty  use.  In  case  of  my  exposition  of  Hegel  I 
have  felt  it  needful  to  show  by  rather  more  frequent 
notes,  as  well  as  by  appendix  C,  that  between  my  very 
nntechnical  phraseology  and  Hegel's  elaborate  processes 
there  is  a  pretty  deliberately  planned  relation,  which  the 


Xll  PREFACE. 

professional  student  can  verify.  Schopenhauer,  on  the 
other  hand,  very  readily  lends  himself  to  the  method  of 
these  lectures,  and  footnotes  could  in  his  case,  although 
unwillingly,  be  wholly  spared.  Both  the  Hegel  and  the 
Schopenhauer  papers  have  appeared  in  the  "  Atlantic 
Monthly."^  Both  are  here  considerably  enlarged. 

That  the  modern  philosophical  doctrine  of  Evolution, 
in  its  wholeness  is,  historically  speaking,  an  outcome,  and 
not  a  very  remote  one,  of  the  Romantic  movement,  is  an 
obvious  observation  for  a  student  of  the  history  of  thought ; 
and  yet  I  am  not  aware  that  this  observation  has  hitherto 
been  frequently  made  in  a  form  easily  accessible  to  Eng- 
lish readers.  So  important  and  doubtless  permanent  an 
acquisition  of  modern  thought  as  is  the  theory  of  evolu- 
lution  deserves  to  be  itself  understood  as  a  product  of  a 
genuine  and  continuous  growth,  and  not  as  a  special  crea- 
tion of  Mr.  Spencer,  or  as  the  result  of  any  single  cata- 
strophic change  such  as  even  the  appearance  of  Darwin's 
wonderful  "Origin  of  Species."  These  things  played 
their  great  part ;  but  the  historical  motives  of  the  whole 
movement  were  very  deep-lying  and  manifold. 

Two  of  my  constructive  papers  in  Part  II,  the  tenth  and 
the  twelfth  of  the  series  of  lectures,  have  been  entirely 
rewritten,  and  have  never  been  read  at  all  as  lectures  in 
their  present  form.  In  the  eleventh  lecture,  on  Idealism, 
and  elsewhere  throughout  my  book  I  have  given  promi- 
nence to  the  strictly  "  metaphysical "  rather  than  to  what 
is  technically  called  the  "  epistemological "  meaning  of 
the  word  idealism  itself.  The  technical  reader  is  familiar 
with  the  numerous  meanings  which  this  well-known  word 
has  come  to  possess.  In  its  "epistemological"  sense 
idealism  involves  a  theory  of  the  nature  of  our  human 


PREFACE.  xiii 

"knowledge ;  and  various  decidedly  different  theories  are 
called  by  this  name  in  view  of  one  common  feature, 
namely,  the  stress  that  they  lay  upon  the  "  subjectivity  " 
of  a  larger  or  smaller  portion  of  what  pretends  to  be  our 
knowledge  of  things.  In  this  sense  Kant's  theory  of  the 
subjectivity  of  space  and  time  was  called  by  himself  a 
"  Transcendental  Idealism."  But  in  its  "  metaphysical " 
sense,  idealism  is  a  theory  as  to  the  nature  of  the  real 
world,  however  we  may  come  to  know  that  nature.  Falck- 
enberg,  in  his  "  Geschichte  der  neueren  Philosophic,"  p. 
476,  defines  one  very  prominent  form  of  metaphysical 
idealism  as  the  "  belief  in  a  spiritual  principle  at  the  basis 
of  the  world,  without  the  reduction  of  the  physical  world 
to  a  mere  illusion."  In  this  sense,  as  he  goes  on  to  say, 
namely  in  the  sense  "  that  matter  is  an  expression  {Pro- 
dukf)  of  the  world-spirit,  Fichte,  Schelling,  Hegel,  and 
their  allies  are  together  named  the  idealistic  school."  As 
Vaihinger  has  well  remarked,  in  his  admirable  essay  on 
Kant's  "  Widerlegung  des  Idealismus  "  (p.  95),  it  is  the 
metaphysical  and  not  the  epistemological  meaning  of  the 
term  "  idealism  "  that  has  been  customary  in  the  literature 
since  HegeL  This  fact  every  well-informed  student  will 
have  in  mind  whenever  he  uses  the  word  without  express 
definition. 

The  problems  of  the  theory  of  knowledge  exist  of 
course  in  some  form  for  every  serious  philosopher.  The 
analyses  suggested  by  the  various  forms  of  "  epistemolo- 
gical "  idealism  will  have,  moreover,  permanent  value  for 
the  investigator  of  our  knowledge.  Every  "metaphysi- 
cal "  idealism  will  have  been  affected  in  one  way  or  an- 
other by  such  analyses.  But  to  imagine  that  a  "  meta- 
physical "  idealist  is  as  such  a  person  whose  principles  con* 


XIV  PREFACE. 

sistently  involve  the  doubt  or  denial  of  the  existence  of 
everything  and  every  one  excepting  his  own  finite  self,  is 
an  old  and  trivial  misunderstanding,  unworthy  of  an  his- 
torical student.  A  metaphysical  idealist  will  of  course 
deal  with  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  knowledge  and 
its  object,  and  will  try  to  get  at  the  nature  of  the  real 
world  by  means  of  a  solution  of  this  very  problem.  How 
he  may  do  this  I  have  tried  to  show  in  the  proper 
place.  None  the  less,  a  doctrine  remains,  in  the  meta- 
physical sense,  idealistic,  if  it  maintains  that  the  world 
is,  in  its  wholeness,  and  in  all  of  its  real  constituent 
parts,  a  world  of  mind  or  of  spirit.  The  opposite  of 
an  idealist,  in  this  sense,  is  one  who  maintains  the  ulti- 
mate existence  of  wholly  unspiritual  realities  at  the  basis 
of  experience  and  as  the  genuine  truth  of  the  world  — 
such  unspiritual  realities  for  instance  as  an  absolute 
"Unknowable,"  or,  again,  as  what  Hobbes  meant  by 
"  Body."  The  "  epistemological "  problem,  that  is,  the 
question  as  to  how  we  "  transcend  "  the  "  subjective  "  in 
our  knowledge,  exists  at  the  outset  of  philosophy,  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  sense  for  metaphysical  realists  and  for 
their  opponents,  the  metaphysical  idealists.  Whether  and 
how  they  are  to  solve  this  problem  depends  upon  their 
seriousness  of  philosophical  reflection,  as  well  as  upon 
what  the  true  solution  may  turn  out  to  be.  My  own  view 
is  that  only  the  metaphysical  idealist  is  in  possession  of 
a  successful  solution  for  the  epistemological  problem  (see 
text,  page  382). 

These  last  remarks  are  meant  mainly  for  the  technical 
reader,  to  whom,  also,  appendices  B  and  C  are  exclusively 
addressed. 

But  Lecture  XII,  on  "  The  World  of  Description  and 


PREFACE.  XV 

the  World  of  Appreciation,"  attempts  a  statement  of  cer- 
tain general  speculations  in  a  form  which  I  feel  to  have 
its  own  degree  of  relative  novelty,  despite  the  fact  that 
the  problems  are  of  the  oldest,  and  that  the  paper  is  only 
one  effort  more  to  define  a  "  double-aspect "  theory  of  the 
relations  of  the  physical  and  the  moral  and  aesthetic 
worlds.  I  hope  that  the  argument  of  this  paper  will  be 
on  the  whole  accessible  to  every  reader.  Despite  the 
rapid  flight  there  taken  through  a  very  wide  region,  what 
I  present  may  have  for  some  fellow-students  a  genuine 
and  not  wholly  momentary  suggestiveness. 

My  thanks  are  due  for  the  constant  stimulation  and 
frequent  kindly  criticism  received  from  my  colleagues 
Professors  Palmer  and  James.  In  previous  publications 
I  have  more  than  once  had  occasion  to  acknowledge  their 
aid,  without  which  all  my  work  would  have  been  impossi- 
ble. To  repeat  such  acknowledgment  is  only  to  confess 
that  the  debt  to  my  elder  colleagues  is  as  enduring  as  is 
my  wish  to  make  some  return. 

Dr.  Benjamin  Hand,  Assistant  of  the  Philosophical  De- 
partment at  Harvard,  is  responsible  for  the  careful  index. 

JOSIAH  ROYCE. 
CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS,  Jan.  1,  1892. 


CONTENTS. 


taCTUBB  FAOB 

L  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION . 1 

PART  I.    STUDIES  OF  THINKERS  AND  PROBLEMS. 

H.  THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY;  CHARACTERISTICS 
OF  THE  FIRST  PERIOD  ;  ILLUSTRATION  BY  MEANS  OF 
THE  RELIGIOUS  ASPECT  OF  SPINOZISM 27 

III.  THE  REDISCOVERY  OF  THE  INNER  LIFE;  FROM  SPINOZA  TO 

KANT 68 

IV.  KANT 101 

FIGHTS 135 

THE  ROMANTIC  SCHOOL  IN  PHILOSOPHY 164 

VlL  HEGEL 190 

VIII.  SCHOPENHAUER 228 

["HE  RISE  OF  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION 266 

PART  II.    SUGGESTIONS  OF  DOCTRINE. 

X.  NATURE   AND   EVOLUTION;    THE    OUTER  WORLD  AND  ITS 

PARADOX 311 

XI.  REALITY    AND    IDEALISM;    THE    INNER   WORLD    AND    ITS 

MEANING 341 

sicAL  LAW  AND  FREEDOM;  THE  WORLD  OF  DESCRIP- 

TION   AND   THE    WORLD   OF   APPRECIATION 381 

XIH./OPTIMI8M,  PESSIMISM  AND  THE  MORAL  ORDER 435 

APPENDIX  A.  SYLLABUS  OF  THE  LECTURES 473 

APPENDIX  B.  ON  KANT'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  DEDUCTION  OF 

THE  CATEGORIES 483 

APPENDIX  C.    THE  HEGELIAN  THEORY  OF  UNTVERSALS  .    .  493 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 


LECTURE  I. 

GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

IN  the  following  course  of  lectures  I  shall  try  to  sug- 
gest, in  a  fashion  suited  to  the  general  student,  something 
about  the  men,  the  problems,  and  the  issues  that  seem  to 
me  most  interesting  in  a  limited,  but  highly  representative 
portion  of  the  history  of  modern  philosophy.  I  under- 
take this  work  with  a  keen  sense  of  the  limitations  of  my 
time  and  my  powers.  I  plead  as  excuse  only  my  desire 
to  interest  some  of  my  fellow-students  in  the  great  con- 
cerns of  philosophy. 

I. 

The  assumption  upon  which  these  lectures  are  based 
is  one  that  I  may  as  well  set  forth  at  the  very  begin- 
ning. It  is  the  assumption  that  Philosophy,  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  term,  is  not  a  presumptuous  effort  to  explain 
the  mysteries  of  the  world  by  means  of  any  superhuman 
insight  or  extraordinary  cunning,  but  has  its  origin  and 
value  in  an  attempt  to  give  a  reasonable  account  of  our 
own  personal  attitude  towards  the  more  serious  business 
of  life.  You  philosophize  when  you  reflect  critically  upon 
what  you  are  actually  doing  in  your  world.  What  you 
are  doing  is  of  course,  in  the  first  place,  living.  And  life 
involves  passions,  faiths,  doubts,  and  courage.  The  crit- 
ical inquiry  into  what  all  these  things  mean  and  im- 
ply is  philosophy.  We  have  our  faith  in  life ;  we  want 


2  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

reflectively  to  estimate  this  faith.  We  feel  ourselves  in 
a  world  of  law  and  of  significance.  Yet  why  we  feel  this 
homelike  sense  of  the  reality  and  the  worth  of  our  world 
is  a  matter  for  criticism.  Such  a  criticism  of  life,  made 
elaborate  and  thorough-going,  is  a  philosophy. 

If  this  assumption  of  mine  be  well-founded,  it  follows 
that  healthy  philosophizing,  or  thorough-going  self-criti- 
cism, is  a  very  human  and  natural  business,  in  which 
fou  are  all  occasionally,  if  not  frequently  engaged,  and 
lor  which  you  will  therefore  from  the  start  have  a  certain 
sympathy.  Whether  we  will  it  or  no,  we  all  of  us  do 
philosophize.  The  difference  between  the  temperament 
which  loves  technical  philosophy  and  the  temperament 
which  can  make  nothing  of  so-called  metaphysics  is 
rather  one  of  degree  than  of  kind.  The  moral  order,  the 
evils  of  life,  the  authority  of  conscience,  the  intentions 
of  God,  how  often  have  I  not  heard  them  discussed,  and 
with  a  wise  and  critical  skepticism,  too,  by  men  who  sel- 
dom looked  into  books.  The  professional  student  of  phi- 
losophy does,  as  his  constant  business,  precisely  what  all 
other  people  do  at  moments.  In  the  life  of  non-meta- 
physical people,  reflection  on  destiny  and  the  deepest 
truths  of  life  occupies  much  the  same  place  as  music 
occupies  in  the  lives  of  appreciative,  but  much  distracted 
amateurs.  The  constant  student  of  philosophy  is  merely 
the  professional  musician  of  reflective  thought.  He  daily 
plays  his  scales  in  the  form  of  what  the  scoffers  call 
"  chopping  logic."  He  takes,  in  short,  a  delight  in  the 
technical  subtleties  of  his  art  which  makes  his  enthusiasm 
often  incomprehensible  to  less  devoted  analysts  of  life. 
But  his  love  for  speculation  is  merely  their  own  natural 
taste  somewhat  specialized.  He  is  a  sort  of  miser,  secretly 
hoarding  up  the  treasures  of  reflection  which  other  people 
wear  as  the  occasional  ornaments  of  intercourse,  or  use  as 
a  part  of  the  heavier  coinage  of  conversation.  If,  as  non- 
professional  philosophers,  you  confine  your  reflections  to 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.  3 

moments,  the  result  is  perhaps  a  serious  talk  with  a  friend, 
or  nothing  more  noteworthy  than  an  occasional  hour  of 
meditation,  a  dreamy  glance  of  wonder,  as  it  were,  at 
this  whole  great  and  deep  universe  before  you,  with  its 
countless  worlds  and  its  wayward  hearts,  Such  chance 
heart  searchings,  such  momentary  communiugs  with  the 
universal,  such  ungrown  germs  of  reflection,  would  under 
other  circumstances  develop  into  systems  of  philosophy. 
If  you  let  them  pass  from  your  attention  you  soon  forget 
them,  and  may  then  even  fancy  that  you  have  small  fond- 
ness for  metaphysics.  But,  none  the  less,  all  intelligent 
people,  even  including  the  haters  of  metaphysics,  are 
despite  themselves  occasionally  metaphysicians. 

II. 

All  this,  however,  by  way  of  mere  opening  suggestion. 
What  you  wish  to  know  further,  through  this  introduc- 
tory lecture,  is,  how  this  natural  tendency  to  reflect  criti- 
cally upon  life  leads  men  to  frame  elaborate  systems  of 
philosophy,  why  it  is  that  these  systems  have  been  so 
numerous  and  so  varied  in  the  past,  and  whether  or  no 
it  seems  to  be  true,  as  many  hold,  that  tne  outcome  of  all 
this  long  and  arduous  labor  of  the  philosophers  has  so 
far  been  nothing  but  doubtful  speculation  and  hopeless 
variety  of  opinion.  I  suppose  that  a  student  who  knows 
little  as  yet  of  the  details  of  philosophic  study  feels  as 
his  greatest  difficulty,  when  he  approaches  the  topic  for 
the  first  time,  the  confusing  variety  of  the  doctrines  of 
the  philosophers,  joined  as  it  is  with  the  elaborateness 
and  the  obscurity  that  seem  so  characteristic  of  technical 
speculation.  So  much  labor,  you  say,  and  all  thus  far 
in  vain !  For  if  the  thinkers  really  aimed  to  bring  to 
pass  an  as^eement  amongst  enlightened  persons  about  the 
great  truths  that  are  to  be  at  the  basis  of  human  life,  how 
sadly,  you  will  say,  they  seemed  to  have  failed!  How 
monstrous  on  the  one  hand  their  toils !  Hegel's  eighteen 


4  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

volumes  of  published  books  and  of  posthumously  edited 
lecture  notes  are  but  a  specimen  of  what  such  men  have 
produced.  A  prominent  English  philosopher  was  flip- 
pantly accused,  a  few  years  since,  in  a  gay  and  irrespon- 
sible volume  of  reminiscences,  of  having  been  the  writer 
of  books  that,  as  the  scoffing  author  in  substance  said, 
"fill  several  yards  on  the  shelves  of  our  libraries."  The 
prominent  philosopher  indignantly  responded,  in  a  letter 
addressed  to  a  literary  weekly.  "  His  critic,"  said  he, 
"  was  recklessly  inaccurate."  As  a  fact  his  own  collected 
works,  set  side  by  side  on  a  shelf,  cover  a  little  less  than 
two  feet !  How  vast  the  toil,  then,  and  on  the  other  hand, 
to  what  end?  A  distinguished  German  student  of  the 
history  of  philosophy,  Friedrich  Albert  Lange,  upon  one 
occasion,  wrote  these  words :  "  Once  for  all  we  must  defi- 
nitely set  aside  the  claim  of  the  metaphysicians,  of  what- 
ever school  and  tendency,  that  their  deductions  are  such 
as  forbid  any  possible  strife,  or  that  if  you  only  first  thor- 
oughly come  into  possession  of  every  detail  of  some  system 
six  fat  volumes  long,  then,  and  not  till  then,  you  will  rec- 
ognize with  wonder  how  each  and  every  individual  conclu- 
sion was  sound  and  clear."  Does  not  this  assertion  of 
Lange's,  this  definitive  setting  aside  of  the  claim  of  the 
metaphysicians,  seem  warranted  by  the  facts?  What  one 
of  these  systems,  six  fat  volumes  long,  has  ever  satisfied  in 
its  entirety  any  one  but  the  master  who  wrote  it,  and  the 
least  original  and  thoughtful  of  his  pupils  ?  What  so 
pathetic,  then,  in  this  history  of  scholarly  production,  as 
this  voluminous  and  systematic  unpersuasiveness  of  the 
philosophers  ?  They  aimed,  each  one  in  his  own  private 
way,  at  the  absolute,  and  so,  if  they  failed,  they  must, 
you  will  think,  have  failed  utterly.  Each  one  raised,  all 
alone,  his  own  temple  to  his  own  god,  declared  that  he,  the 
first  of  men,  possessed  the  long-sought  truth,  and  under- 
took to  initiate  the  world  into  his  own  mysteries.  Hence 
it  is  that  so  many  temples  lie  in  ruins  and  so  many  images 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.  6 

of  false  gods  are  shattered  to  fragments.  I  put  the  case 
thus  strongly  against  the  philosophers,  because  I  am 
anxious  to  have  you  comprehend  from  the  start  how  we 
are  to  face  this  significant  preliminary  difficulty  of  our 
topic.  It  may  be  true  that  the  philosophers  deal  with 
life,  and  that,  too,  after  a  fashion  known  and  occasionally 
tried  by  all  of  us.  But  is  not  their  dealing  founded  upon 
vain  pretense  ?  How  much  better,  you  may  say,  to  live 
nobly  than  to  inquire  thus  learnedly  and  ineffectually  into 
the  mysteries  of  life  ?  As  the  "  Imitation  of  Christ "  so 
skillfully  states  the  case  against  philosophy,  speaking 
indeed  from  the  point  of  view  of  simple  faith,  but  using 
words  that  doubters,  too,  can  understand,  "  What  doth  it 
profit  thee  to  enter  into  deep  discussion  concerning  the 
Holy  Trinity,  if  thou  lack  humility,  and  be  thus  displeas- 
ing to  the  Trinity  ?  For  verily  it  is  not  deep  words  that 
make  a  man  holy  and  upright.  I  had  rather  feel  contri- 
tion than  be  skillful  in  the  definition  thereof."  And 
again,  "  Tell  me  now  where  are  all  those  masters  and 
teachers,  whom  thou  knewest  well,  when  they  were  yet 
with  you,  and  flourished  in  learning?  Their  stalls  are 
now  filled  by  others,  who  perhaps  never  have  one  thought 
concerning  them.  Whilst  they  lived  they  seemed  to  be 
somewhat,  but  now  no  one  speaks  of  them.  Oh,  how 
quickly  passeth  the  glory  of  the  world  away !  Would 
that  their  life  and  knowledge  had  agreed  together  !  For 
then  would  they  have  read  and  inquired  unto  good  pur- 
pose." Or  once  again,  and  this  time  in  the  well-known 
words  of  Fitzgerald's  "  Omar  Khayyam  "  stanzas  :  — 

"  Why  all  the  Saints  and  Sages  who  discussed 
Of  the  two  worlds  so  learnedly  are  thrust 
Like  foolish  prophets  forth.     Their  words  to  Scorn 
Are  scattered,  and  their  mouths  are  stopt  with  dust." 

Well,  if  such  is  the  somewhat  portentous  case  against 
philosophy,  what  can  we  say  for  philosophy?  I  answer 
first,  that  the  irony  of  fate  treats  all  human  enterprises  in 


6  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

precisely  this  way,  if  one  has  regard  to  the  immediate 
intent  of  the  men  engaged  in  them.  Philosophy  is  not 
alone  in  missing  her  directly  sought  aim.  But  true  success 
lies  often  in  serving  ends  that  were  higher  than  the  ones 
we  intended  to  serve.  Surely  no  statesman  ever  founded 
an  enduring  social  order ;  nay,  one  may  add  that  no 
statesman  ever  produced  even  temporarily  the  precise 
social  order  that  he  meant  to  found.  No  poet  ever  gave 
us  just  the  song  that  in  his  best  moments  he  had  meant 
and  hoped  to  sing.  No  human  life  ever  attained  the  ful- 
fillment of  the  glorious  dreams  of  its  youth.  And  as  for 
passing  away,  and  being  forgotten,  and  having  one's  mouth 
stopped  with  dust,  surely  one  is  not  obliged  to  be  either  a 
saint  or  a  sage  to  have  that  fate  awaiting  one.  But  still 
the  saints  and  sages  are  not  total  failures,  even  if  they 
are  forgotten.  There  was  an  enduring  element  about 
them.  They  did  not  wholly  die. 

In  view  of  all  this,  what  we  need  to  learn  concerning 
philosophy  is,  not  whether  its  leaders  have  in  any  sense 
failed  or  not,  but  whether  its  enterprise  has  been  essen- 
tially a  worthy  one,  one  through  which  the  human  spirit 
has  gained ;  whether  the  dark  tower  before  which  these 
Rolands  have  ended  their  pilgrimage  has  contained  trea- 
sures in  any  way  worthy  of  their  quest.  For  a  worthy 
quest  always  leaves  good  traces  behind  it,  and  more  trea- 
sures are  won  by  heroes  than  they  visibly  bring  home  in 
their  own  day.  A  more  careful  examination  of  the  true 
office  of  philosophy  may  serve  to  show  us,  in  fact,  both 
why  final  success  in  it  has  been  unattainable  and  why  the 
partial  successes  have  been  worth  the  cost.  Let  such  an 
examination  be  our  next  business. 

m. 

The  task  of  humanity,  to  wit,  the  task  of  organizing 
here  on  earth  a  worthy  social  life,  is  in  one  sense  a  hope- 
lessly complex  one.  There  are  our  endlessly  numerous 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.  7 

material  foes,  our  environment,  our  diseases,  our  weak- 
nesses. There  are  amongst  us  men  ourselves,  our  rival- 
ries, our  selfish  passions,  our  anarchical  impulses,  our 
blindness,  our  weak  wills,  our  short  and  careful  lives. 
These  things  all  stand  in  the  way  of  progress.  For  prog- 
ress, for  organization,  for  life,  for  spirituality,  stand,  as 
the  best  forces,  our  healthier  social  instincts,  our  cour- 
age, our  endurance,  and  our  insight.  Civilization  depends 
upon  these.  How  hopeless  every  task  of  humanity,  were 
not  instinct  often  on  the  side  of  order  and  of  spirituality. 
How  quick  would  come  our  failure,  were  not  courage  and 
endurance  ours.  How  blindly  chance  would  drive  us,  did 
we  not  love  insight  for  its  own  sake,  and  cultivate  con- 
templation even  when  we  know  not  yet  what  use  we  can 
make  of  it.  And  so,  these  three,  if  you  will,  to  wit, 
healthy  instinct,  enduring  courage,  and  contemplative  in- 
sight, rule  the  civilized  world.  He  who  wants  life  to  pros- 
per longs  to  have  these  things  alike  honored  and  cultivated. 
They  are  brethren,  these  forces  of  human  spirituality ;  they 
cannot  do  without  one  another  ;  they  are  all  needed. 

Well,  what  I  have  called  contemplative  insight,  that 
disposition  and  power  of  our  minds  whereby  we  study 
and  enjoy  truth,  expresses  itself  early  and  late,  as  you 
know,  in  the  form  of  a  searching  curiosity  about  our  world 
and  about  life,  a  curiosity  to  which  you  in  vain  endeavor 
to  set  bounds.  As  the  infant  that  studies  its  fist  in  the 
field  of  vision  does  not  know  as  yet  why  this  curiosity 
about  space  and  about  its  own  movements  will  be  of  ser- 
vice to  it,  so  throughout  life  there  is  something  unpracti- 
cal, wayward,  if  so  you  choose  to  call  it,  in  all  our  curious 
questionings  concerning  our  world.  The  value  of  higher 
insight  is  seldom  immediate.  Science  has  an  element 
of  noble  play  about  it.  It  is  not  the  activity,  it  is  the 
often  remote  outcome  of  science,  that  is  of  practical  ser- 
vice. Insight  is  an  ally  of  the  moral  nature  of  man,  an 
ally  of  our  higher  social  instincts,  of  our  loyalty,  of  our 


8  THE  SPIRIT  OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

courage,  of  our  devotion ;  but  the  alliance  is  not  always 
one  intended  directly  by  the  spirit  of  curious  inquiry 
itself.  A  singular  craft  of  our  nature  links  the  most 
theoretical  sorts  of  inquiry  by  unexpected  ties  with  men's 
daily  business.  One  plays  with  silk  and  glass  and  amber, 
with  kites  that  one  flies  beneath  thunder  clouds,  with 
frogs'  legs  and  with  acids.  The  play  is  a  mere  expression 
of  a  curiosity  that  former  centuries  might  have  called  idle. 
But  the  result  of  this  play  recreates  an  industrial  world. 
And  so  it  is  everywhere  with  our  deeper  curiosity.  There 
is  a  sense  in  which  it  is  all  superfluous.  Its  immediate 
results  seem  but  vanity.  One  could  surely  live  without 
them ;  yet  for  the  future,  and  for  the  spiritual  life  of  man- 
kind, these  results  are  destined  to  become  of  vast  import. 
Without  this  cunning  contrivance  of  our  busy  brains, 
with  their  tireless  curiosity  and  their  unpractical  wonder- 
ings,  what  could  even  sound  instinct  and  the  enduring 
heart  have  done  to  create  the  world  of  the  civilized  man  ? 
Of  all  sorts  of  curiosity  one  of  the  most  human  and 
the  most  singular  is  the  reflective  curiosity  whose  highest 
expression  is  philosophy  itself.  This  form  of  curiosity 
scrutinizes  our  own  lives,  our  deepest  instincts,  our  most 
characteristic  responses  to  the  world  in  which  we  live,  our 
typical  "  reflex  actions."  It  tries  to  bring  us  to  a  self- 
consciousness  as  to  our  temperaments.  Our  tempera- 
ments, our  instincts,  are  in  one  sense  fatal.  We  cannot 
directly  alter  them.  What  philosophy  does  is  to  find 
them  out,  to  bring  them  to  the  light,  to  speak  in  words 
the  very  essence  of  them.  And  so  the  historical  office  of 
the  greatest  philosophers  has  always  been  to  reword,  as  it 
•were,  the  meaning  and  the  form  of  the  most  significant 
life,  temperaments,  and  instincts  of  their  own  age.  As 
man  is  social,  as  no  man  lives  alone,  as  your  temperament 
is  simply  the  sum  total  of  your  social  "  reflex  actions,"  is 
just  your  typical  bearing  towards  your  fellows,  the  great 
philosopher,  in  reflecting  on  his  own  deepest  instincts  and 


GENERAL   INTRODUCTION.  9 

faiths,  inevitably  describes,  in  the  terms  of  his  system,  the 
characteristic  attitude  of  his  age  and  people.  So,  for  in- 
stance, Plato  and  Aristotle,  taken  together,  express  for  us, 
in  their  philosophical  writings,  the  essence  of  the  highest 
Greek  faith  and  life.  The  Greek  love  of  the  beautiful 
and  reverence  for  the  state,  the  Greek  union  of  intellec- 
tual freedom  with  conventional  bondage  to  the  forms  of 
politics  and  of  religion,  the  whole  Greek  attitude  towards 
the  universe,  in  so  far  as  the  Athens  of  that  age  could 
embody  it,  are  made  articulate  in  enduring  form  in  the 
speculations  of  these  representative  men.  They  con- 
sciously interpret  this  Hellenic  life,  —  they  do  also  more  : 
they  criticise  it.  Plato  especially  is  in  some  of  his  work 
a  fairly  destructive  analyst  of  his  nation's  faith.  And 
yet  it  is  just  this  faith,  incorporated  as  it  was  into  his 
own  temperament,  bred  into  his  every  fibre,  that  he  must 
needs  somehow  express  in  his  doctrine.  And  now  per- 
haps you  may  already  see  why  there  is  of  necessity  no- 
thing absolute,  nothing  final,  about  much  that  a  Plato 
himself  may  have  looked  upon  as  absolute  and  as  final  in 
his  work.  Greek  life  was  not  all  of  human  life ;  Greek 
life  was  doomed  to  pass  away ;  Greek  instincts  and  limi- 
tations could  not  be  eternal.  The  crystal  heavens  that 
the  Greek  saw  above  him  were  indeed  doomed  to  be  rolled 
up  like  a  scroll,  and  the  elements  of  his  life  were  certain 
to  pass  away  in  fervent  heat.  But  then,  into  all  nobler 
future  humanity,  Greek  life  was  certain  to  enter,  as  a 
factor,  as  a  part  of  its  civilized  instincts,  as  an  ennobling 
passion  in  its  artistic  production,  as  a  moment  of  its  spir- 
ituality. And  therefore,  too,  Plato's  philosophy,  doomed 
in  one  sense  not  to  be  absolute  or  final,  has  its  part,  as  a 
fact,  in  your  own  reflection  to-day,  and  would  have  its 
part  in  the  absolute  philosophical  estimate  of  the  highest 
human  life  if  ever  we  attained  that  estimate.  If  philoso- 
phy criticises,  estimates,  and  to  that  end  rewords  life,  if 
the  great  philosopher  expresses  in  his  system  the  most 


10  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

characteristic  faiths  and  passions  of  his  age,  then  indeed 
the  limitation  of  the  age  will  be  in  a  sense  the  limitation 
of  the  philosophy ;  and  with  the  life  whose  temperament 
it  reflectively  embodied  the  philosophy  will  pass  away. 
It  will  pass  away,  but  it  will  not  be  lost.  A  future  hu- 
manity will,  if  civilization  healthily  progresses,  inherit  the 
old  kingdom,  and  reembody  the  truly  essential  and  immor- 
tal soul  of  its  old  life.  This  new  humanity,  including  in 
itself  the  spirit  of  the  old,  will  need  something,  at  least, 
of  the  old  philosophy  to  express  in  reflective  fashion  its 
own  attitude  towards  the  universe.  This  something  that 
it  needs  of  the  old  philosophy  may  not  be  that  which  the 
philosopher  had  himself  imagined  to  be  his  most  absolute 
possession.  Like  the  statesman,  he  will  have  builded 
better  than  he  knew.  As  Caesar's  Roman  empire  had  for 
its  destiny  not  to  exclude  the  Germans,  as  Caesar  had 
driven  out  Ariovistus,  but  to  civilize  and  to  Christianize 
them,  and  finally  to  pass  in  great  part  over  to  their  keep- 
ing, so  Plato's  philosophy  had  for  its  office  to  suggest 
thoughts  that  Christianity  afterwards  made  the  common 
treasure  of  the  very  humanity  that  his  mind  would  have 
regarded  as  hopelessly  barbarian.  No,  the  philosopher's 
work  is  not  lost  when,  in  one  sense,  his  system  seems  to 
have  been  refuted  by  death,  and  when  time  seems  to  have 
scattered  to  scorn  the  words  of  his  dust-filled  mouth. 
His  immediate  end  may  have  been  unattained  ;  but  thou- 
sands of  years  may  not  be  long  enough  to  develop  for 
humanity  the  full  significance  of  his  reflective  thought. 

Insight,  this  curious  scrutiny  of  ours  into  the  truth, 
keeps  here,  as  you  will  see,  its  immediately  unpractical, 
its  ultimately  significant  character.  There  is  indeed  a 
sense  in  which  life  has  no  need  of  the  philosopher.  He 
does  not  invent  life,  nor  does  he  lead  in  its  race ;  he 
follows  after ;  he  looks  on  ;  he  is  no  prophet  to  inspire 
men ;  he  has  a  certain  air  of  the  playful  about  him. 
Plato,  in  a  famous  passage,  makes  sport  of  the  men  of  the 


GENERAL   INTRODUCTION.  11 

world,  who  are  driven  by  business,  who  are  oppressed  by 
the  law  courts,  whose  only  amusement  is  evil  gossip  about 
their  neighbors.  The  philosopher,  on  the  contrary,  ac- 
cording to  Plato,  has  infinite  leisure,  and  accordingly 
thinks  of  the  infinite,  but  does  not  know  who  his  next 
neighbor  is,  and  never  dreams  of  the  law  courts,  or  of 
finishing  his  business  at  any  fixed  hour.  His  life  is  a  sort 
of  artistic  game ;  his  are  not  the  passions  of  the  world ; 
his  is  the  reflection  that  comprehends  the  world.  The 
Thracian  servant  maids  laugh  at  him,  as  the  one  in  the 
story  laughed  at  Thales,  because  he  stares  at  the  heavens, 
and  hence  occasionally  falls  into  wel'.s.  But  what  is  he 
in  the  sight  of  the  gods,  and  what  are  the  servant  maids  ? 
When  they  are  some  day  asked  to  look  into  the  heavens, 
and  to  answer  concerning  the  truth,  what  scorn  will  not 
be  their  lot  ?  After  some  such  fashion  does  Plato  seek  to 
glorify  the  contemplative  separation  from  the  pettiness  of 
life  which  shall  give  to  the  philosopher  his  freedom.  And 
yet,  as  we  know,  this  freedom,  this  sublime  playfulness, 
of  even  a  Plato,  does  not  suggest  the  real  justification  of 
his  work.  This  game  of  reflection  is  like  all  the  rest  of 
our  insight,  indirectly  valuable  because  from  it  all  there 
is  a  return  to  life  possible,  and  in  case  of  a  great  thinker 
like  Plato,  certain  to  occur.  The  coming  humanity  shall 
learn  from  the  critic  who,  standing  indeed  outside  of  life, 
embodied  in  his  reflection  the  meaning  of  it. 

Thus  far,  then,  my  thought  has  been  simply  this. 
Humanity  depends,  for  its  spirituality  and  its  whole  civili- 
zation, upon  faiths  and  passions  that  are  in  the  first  place 
instinctive,  inarticulate,  and  in  part  unconscious.  The 
philosopher  tries  to  formulate  and  to  criticise  these  in- 
stincts. What  he  does  will  always  have  a  two-fold  limi- 
tation. It  will,  on  the  one  hand,  be  criticism  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  single  man,  of  a  single  age,  of  a  single 
group  of  ideals,  as  Plato  or  Aristotle  embodied  the  faith 
of  but  one  great  age  of  Greek  life,  and  did  that  from  a 


12  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

somewhat  private  and  personal  point  of  view.  This  first 
necessary  limitation  of  the  philosopher's  work  makes  his 
system  less  absolute,  less  truthful,  less  final  than  he  had 
meant  it  to  be.  Another  humanity  will  have  a  new  faith, 
r  new  temperament,  and  in  so  far  will  need  a  new  phi- 
losophy. Only  the  final  and  absolute  humanity,  only  the 
ultimate  and  perfect  civilization,  would  possess,  were  such 
a  civilization  possible  on  earth,  the  final  and  absolute 
philosophy.  But  this  limitation,  as  we  have  seen,  while 
it  dooms  a  philosopher  to  one  kind  of  defeat,  does  a't 
deprive  his  work  of  worth.  His  philosophy  is  capable  of 
becoming  and  remaining  just  as  permanently  significant 
as  is  his  civilization  and  its  temperament ;  his  reflective 
work  will  enter  into  future  thought  in  just  the  same  fash- 
ion as  the  deeper  passions  of  his  age  will  beget  the  spirit 
ual  temper  of  those  who  are  to  come  after. 

There  remains  as  second  limitation,  so  we  have  seen, 
the  always  seemingly  unfruitful  critical  attitude  of  the 
philosopher.  He  speculates,  but  does  not  prophesy;  he 
criticises,  but  does  not  create.  Yet  this  limitation  he 
shares  with  all  theory,  with  all  insight ;  and  the  limita- 
tion is  itself  only  partial  and  in  great  measure  illusory. 
Criticism  means  self -consciousness,  and  self-consciousness 
means  renewed  activity  on  a  higher  plane.  The  reflective 
play  of  one  age  becomes  the  passion  of  another.  Plato 
creates  Utopias,  and  the  Christian  faith  of  Europe  after- 
wards gives  them  meaning.  Contemplation  gives  birth  to 
future  conduct,  and  so  the  philosopher  also  becomes,  in 
\is  own  fashion,  a  world-builder. 

rv. 

But  now,  having  said  so  much  for  the  philosopher,  I 
may  venture  to  say  yet  more,  that  if  his  work  is  not  lost 
in  so  far  as  it  enters  into  the  life  of  the  humanity  which 
comes  after  him,  there  is  yet  another  and  a  deeper  sense 
in  which  his  labor  is  not  in  vain.  For  truth  is  once  for 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.  13 

all  manifold,  and  especially  is  the  truth  about  man's  rela- 
tion to  the  universe  manifold.  The  most  fleeting  pas- 
sion, if  so  be  it  is  only  deep  and  humane,  may  reveal  to 
us  some  aspect  of  truth  which  no  other  moment  of  life 
can  fully  express.  I  know  how  difficult  it  is  to  compre- 
hend that  seemingly  opposing  assertions  about  the  world 
may,  in  a  deeper  sense,  turn  out  to  be  equally  true.  I 
must  leave  to  later  discussions  a  fuller  illustration  of  how, 
for  instance,  the  optimist,  who  declares  this  world  to  be 
divine  and  good,  and  the  pessimist,  who  finds  in  our  finite 
world  everywhere  struggle  and  sorrow,  and  who  calls  it 
all  evil,  may  be,  and  in  fact  are,  alike  right,  each  in  his 
own  sense ;  or  of  how  the  constructive  idealist,  who  de- 
clares all  reality  to  be  the  expression  of  divine  ideals,  and 
the  materialist,  who  sees  in  nature  only  matter  in  motion 
and  law  absolute,  may  be  but  viewing  the  same  truth  from 
different  sides.  All  this,  I  say,  will  be  touched  upon 
hereafter.  What  I  here  want  to  suggest  is  that  the  truth 
about  this  world  is  certainly  so  manifold,  so  paradoxical, 
so  capable  of  equally  truthful  and  yet  seemingly  opposed 
descriptions,  as  to  forbid  us  to  declare  a  philosopher 
wrong  in  his  doctrine  merely  because  we  find  it  easy  to 
make  plausible  a  doctrine  that  at  first  sight  appears  to 
conflict  with  his  own.  Young  thinkers  always  find  refu- 
tation easy,  and  old  doctrines  not  hard  to  transcend  ;  and 
yet  what  if  the  soul  of  the  old  doctrines  should  be  true 
just  because  the  new  doctrines  seemingly  oppose,  but 
actually  complete  them  ?  Our  reflective  insights,  in  fol- 
lowing our  life,  will  find  now  this,  now  that  aspect  of 
things  prominent.  What  if  all  the  aspects  should  con- 
tain truth  ?  What  if  our  failure  thus  far  to  find  and  to 
state  the  absolute  philosophy  were  due  to  the  fact,  not 
that  all  the  philosophies  thus  far  have  been  essentially 
false,  but  that  the  truth  is  so  wealthy  as  to  need  not  only 
these,  but  yet  other  and  future  expressions  to  exhaust  its 
treasury?  I  speak  thus  far  tentatively  and  vaguely.  -I 


14  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODER  ,  PHILOSOPHY. 

must  illustrate  a  little,  although  at  best  I  can  thus  far 
only  suggest. 

Some  people  have  a  fashion  of  recording  their  reflective 
moments  just  as  they  happen  to  come.  If  such  persons 
chance  to  be  poets,  the  form  of  the  record  is  often  the 
thoughtful  lyric.  And  the  thoughtful  lyric  poem  usually 
possesses  the  very  quality  which  made  Aristotle  call 
poetry  a  "  more  philosophical "  portrayal  of  human  life 
than  history.  It  is  indeed  marvelous  how  metaphysical 
a  great  poem  of  passion  almost  always  is.  The  passion 
of  the  moment  makes  its  own  universe,  flashes  back  like 
a  jewel  the  light  of  the  far-off  sun  of  truth,  but  colors 
this  reflected  light  with  its  own  mysterious  glow.  "  You 
are,  you  shall  be  mine,"  cries  the  strong  emotion  to  the 
earth  and  to  the  whole  choir  of  heaven,  and  the  briefest 
poem  may  contain  a  sort  of  philosophic  scheme  of  the 
entire  creation.  The  scheme  is  sometimes  as  false  as  the 
passion  portrayed  is  transient ;  but  it  is  also  often  as  true 
as  the  passion  is  deep,  and  whoever  has  once  seen  how 
variously  and  yet  how  significantly  the  moods  expressed 
in  great  poems  interpret  both  our  life  and  the  reality  of 
which  our  life  forms  part,  will  not  be  likely  to  find  that 
philosophical  systems  are  vain  merely  because  the  phi- 
losophers, like  the  poets,  differ.  In  fact  the  reason  why 
there  is  as  yet  no  one  final  philosophy  may  be  very 
closely  allied  to  the  reason  why  there  is  no  final  and 
complete  poem.  Life  is  throughout  a  complicated  thing  ; 
the  truth  of  the  spirit  remains  an  inexhaustible  treasure 
house  of  experience ;  and  hence  no  individual  experi- 
ence, whether  it  be  the  momentary  insight  of  genius 
recorded  in  the  lyric  poem,  or  the  patient  accumulation 
of  years  of  professional  plodding  through  the  problems  of 
philosophy,  will  ever  fully  tell  all  the  secrets  which  life 
has  to  reveal. 

It  is  for  just  this  reason,  so  I  now  suggest,  that  when 
you  study  philosophy,  you  have  to  be  tolerant,  receptive, 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.  15 

willing  to  look  at  the  world  from  many  sides,  fearless  as 
to  the  examination  of  what  seem  to  be  even  dangerous 
doctrines,  patient  in  listening  to  views  that  look  even  ab- 
horrent to  common  sense.  It  is  useless  to  expect  a  simple 
and  easy  account  of  so  paradoxical  an  affair  as  this  our 
universe  and  our  life.  When  you  first  look  into  philoso- 
phy you  are  puzzled  and  perhaps  frightened  by  those 
manifold  opinions  of  the  philosophers  of  which  we  have 
thus  far  had  so  much  to  say.  "  If  they,  who  have  thought 
so  deeply,  differ  so  much,"  you  say,  "  then  what  hope  is 
there  that  the  truth  can  ever  be  known  ?  "  But  if  you 
examine  further  you  find  that  this  variety,  better  studied, 
is  on  its  more  human  side  largely  an  expression  of  the 
liveliness  and  individuality  of  the  spiritual  temperaments 
of  strong  men.  The  truth  is  not  in  this  case  "in  the 
middle."  The  truth  is  rather  "  the  whole."  Let  me 
speak  at  once  in  the  terminology  of  a  special  philosophical 
doctrine,  and  say  that  the  world  spirit  chose  these  men 
as  his  voices,  —  these  men  and  others  like  them,  and  that 
in  fact  he  did  so  because  he  had  all  these  things  to  voice. 
Pardon  this  fashion  of  speech  ;  I  shall  try  to  make  it 
clearer  hereafter.  Their  experience  then,  let  me  say,  is, 
in  its  apparently  confusing  variety,  not  so  much  a  seeing 
of  one  dead  reality  from  many  places,  but  rather  a  critical 
rewording  of  fragments  of  the  one  life  which  it  is  the  des- 
tiny of  man  to  possess  and  to  comprehend.  These  war- 
ring musicians  strike  mutually  discordant  tones.  But  let 
each  sing  his  song  by  himself,  and  the  whole  group  of 
M  eistersanger  shall  discourse  to  you  most  excellent  music. 
For  grant  that  the  philosophers  are  all  in  fact  expressing 
not  dead  truth,  but  the  essence  of  human  life,  then  be- 
cause this  life  is  many-sided,  the  individual  expressions 
cannot  perfectly  agree.  It  is  the  union  of  many  such 
insights  that  will  be  the  one  true  view  of  life.  Or  again, 
using  the  bolder  phrases,  let  us  say  that  all  these  thinkers 
are  trying  to  comprehend  a  little  of  the  life  of  the  one 


16  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

World  Spirit  who  lives  and  moves  in  all  things.  Then 
surely  this  life,  which  in  our  world  needs  both  the  ante- 
lopes and  the  tigers  to  embody  its  endless  vigor,  that  life 
which  the  frost  and  cold,  the  ice  and  snow,  do  bless  and 
magnify,  is  not  a  life  which  any  one  experience  can  ex- 
haust. All  the  philosophers  are  needed,  not  merely  to 
make  jarring  assertions  about  it,  but  to  give  us  embodi- 
ments now  of  this,  now  of  that  fragment  of  its  wealth 
and  its  eternity.  And  in  saying  this  I  don't  counsel  you 
in  your  study  of  philosophy  merely  to  jumble  together  all 
sorts  of  sayings  of  this  thinker  and  of  that,  and  then  to 
declare,  as  makers  of  eclectic  essays  and  of  books  of  ex- 
tracts love  to  say,  "  This  is  all  somehow  great  and  true." 
What  I  mean  is  that,  apart  from  the  private  whims  and 
the  non-essential  accidents  of  each  great  philosopher,  his 
doctrine  will  contain  for  the  critical  student  an  element 
of  permanent  truth  about  life,  a  truth  which  in  its  isola- 
tion may  indeed  contradict  the  view  of  his  equally  worthy 
co-workers,  but  which,  in  union,  in  synthesis,  in  vital  con- 
nection with  its  very  bitterest  opposing  doctrines,  may 
turn  out  to  be  an  organic  portion  of  the  genuine  treasure 
of  humanity.  Nobody  hates  more  than  I  do  mere  eclec- 
ticism, mere  piecing  together  of  this  fragment  and  that 
for  the  bare  love  of  producing  fraudulent  monuments  of 
philosophic  art.  But  the  fact  is  that,  frauds  aside,  the 
god-like  form  of  truth  exists  for  us  men,  as  it  were,  in 
statuesque  but  scattered  remnants  of  the  once  perfect 
marble.  Through  the  whole  ruined  world,  made  desolate 
by  the  Turks  of  prejudice  and  delusion,  the  philosophers 
wander,  finding  here  and  there  one  of  these  bits  of  the 
eternal  and  genuine  form  of  the  goddess.  Though  I  hate 
fraudulent  restorations  of  a  divine  antiquity,  still  I  know 
that,  notwithstanding  all,  these  fragments  do  somehow 
belong  together,  and  that  the  real  truth  is  no  one  of  the 
bits,  but  is  the  whole  goddess.  What  we  who  love  phi- 
losophy long  for  is  no  piece-work,  but  that  matchless 
whole  itself. 


GENERAL   INTRODUCTION.  17 

The  kind  of  philosophical  breadth  of  view  for  which  I 
am  now  pleading  is  not,  I  assure  you,  the  same  as  mere 
vagueness,  merely  lazy  toleration,  of  all  sorts  of  conflict- 
ing opinions.  Nobody  is  more  aware  than  I  am  that  the 
errors  and  false  theories  of  the  philosophers  are  facts  as 
real  as  are  the  manifold  expressions  which  they  give  to 
truth.  I  am  not  pleading  for  inexactness  or  undecisive- 
ness  of  thought.  What  I  am  really  pleading  for,  as  you 
will  see  in  the  sequel,  is  a  form  of  philosophic  reflection 
that  leads  to  a  very  definite  and  positive  theory  of  the 
universe  itself,  the  theory,  namely,  which  I  have  just  sug- 
gested, a  theory  not  at  all  mystical  in  its  methods,  nor  yet, 
in  its  results,  really  opposed  to  the  postulates  of  science, 
or  to  the  deeper  meaning  at  the  heart  of  common  sense. 
This  theory  is  that  the  whole  universe,  including  the 
physical  world  also,  is  essentially  one  live  thing,  a  mind, 
one  great  Spirit,  infinitely  wealthier  in  his  experiences 
than  we  are,  but  for  that  very  reason  to  be  comprehended 
by  us  only  in  terms  of  our  own  wealthiest  experience.  I 
don't  assume  the  existence  of  such  a  life  in  the  universe 
because  I  want  to  be  vague  or  to  seem  imaginative.  The 
whole  matter  appears  to  me,  as  you  will  hereafter  see,  to 
be  one  of  exact  thought.  The  result,  whatever  it  shall  be, 
must  be  reached  in  strict  accord  with  the  actual  facts  of 
experience  and  the  actual  assumptions  of  human  science* 
The  truth,  whenever  we  get  it,  must  be  as  hard  and  fast 
as  it  is  manifold.  But  the  point  is  that  if  the  universe 
is  a  live  thing,  a  spiritual  reality,  we,  in  progressing  to- 
wards a  comprehension  of  its  nature,  must  needs  first 
comprehend  our  own  life.  And  in  doing  this  we  shall 
pass  through  all  sorts  of  conflicting  moods,  theories,  doc- 
trines ;  and  these  doctrines,  in  the  midst  of  their  conflict 
and  variety,  will  express,  in  fragmentary  ways,  aspects  of 
the  final  doctrine,  so  that,  as  I  said,  the  truth  will  be  the 
whole. 


18  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 


V. 


Thus  far  I  have  spoken  of  the  various  opinions  and  of 
the  general  human  significance  of  the  philosophers.  I 
called  attention,  also,  a  little  while  since,  to  the  appa- 
rently unpractical  attitude  that  they  assume  towards  life. 
In  this  connection  1  have  already  suggested  that  their 
criticism  of  life  has  often  its  destructive  side.  In  these 
present  days,  when  philosophy  is  frequently  so  negative, 
it  is  precisely  this  destructive,  this  skeptically  critical 
character  of  philosophy,  that  to  the  minds  of  many  con- 
stitutes its  best-known  character,  and  its  most  obvious 
danger.  It  is  not  mine  to  defend  recent  philosophy  from 
the  charge  of  being  often  cruelly  critical.  To  many  of 
us  it  might,  indeed,  in  pity  be  said :  "  Mayest  thou  never 
know  what  thou  art."  I  have  myself  more  than  once  felt 
the  pang,  as  I  have  studied  philosophy,  of  finding  out  to 
my  sorrow  what  I  am.  I  have,  therefore,  many  times 
lamented  that  philosophy  is  indeed  often  so  sternly  and  so 
negatively  critical  of  many  things  that  our  hearts  have 
loved  and  prized.  If  any  one  fears  the  pangs  of  self-con- 
sciousness, it  is  not  my  office  to  counsel  him  to  get  it. 
But  I  must,  indeed,  point  out  here  that  when  a  wise  phi- 
losophy is  destructive,  the  true  fault  lies  not  with  the 
critic  who  finds  the  wound  in  our  faith,  but  with  the  faith 
that  has  secretly  nursed  its  own  wounds  in  unconscious- 
ness. Philosophy,  in  the  true  sense  of  that  word,  never 
destroys  an  ideal  that  is  worth  preserving.  Coming  to 
consciousness  of  yourself  can  only  bring  to  light  weakness 
in  case  the  weakness  already  exists  in  you.  If  you  fear, 
I  say,  the  pang  of  such  a  discovery,  —  and,  as  I  can  assure 
you,  the  pang  is  often  keen,  —  then  do  not  try  philosophy. 
For  the  rest,  however,  this  relation  of  philosophy  to  posi- 
tive faith  is  one  whereof  I  may  speak  in  yet  a  very  few 
words  before  I  leave  it.  Let  me  point  out  in  what  sense 
philosophy  is  critical,  but  in  what  sense  also  it  can  hope 
to  be  constructive. 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.  19 

Of  course  philosophy,  as  thus  far  described,  is  sure  to 
begin  at  once,  if  it  can,  with  inquiries  into  the  largest  and 
most  significant  instincts,  the  deepest  faiths  of  humanity. 
These,  when  it  discovers  them,  it  will  single  out  and  criti- 
cise. Hence,  indeed,  the  philosophers  are  always  talking 
of  such  problems  as  duty  and  God.  Hence  they  inquire 
how  we  can  come  to  know  whether  there  is  any  external 
world  at  all,  and,  if  so,  whether  this  world  is  to  be  treated 
as  dead  matter,  or  as  live  mind.  Hence  they  are  curious 
to  study  our  ideas  of  natural  law,  of  moral  freedom,  of 
time,  of  space,  of  causation,  of  self.  They  pry  into  the 
concerns  of  faith  as  if  these  were  theirs  by  divine  right. 
They  are  not  only  prying,  they  are  on  one  side  of  their 
activity  merciless,  skeptical,  paradoxical,  inconsiderate. 
They  don't  ask,  it  would  seem,  how  dear  your  faith  is  to 
you ;  they  analyze  it,  as  they  would  the  reflex  action  of  a 
starfish,  or  the  behavior  of  a  pigeon ;  and  then  they  try 
to  estimate  faith  objectively,  as  an  editor  looks  critically 
at  a  love-sonnet  which  somebody  has  sent  him  (a  sonnet 
written  with  the  author's  heart's  blood),  and  weighs  it 
coolly  and  cruelly  before  he  will  consent  to  find  it  avail- 
able. Even  so  the  philosopher  has  his  standard  of  the 
availability  of  human  faiths.  You  have  to  satisfy  this 
with  your  creed  before  he  will  approve  you.  All  this 
sometimes  seems  cynical,  just  as  the  editor's  coolness  may 
become  provoking.  But  then,  as  you  know,  the  editor, 
with  all  his  apparent  cruelty,  is  a  man  of  sympathy  and 
of  more  than  negative  aims.  He  has  to  consider  what  he 
calls  availability,  because  he  has  his  critical  public  to 
please.  And  the  philosopher  —  he,  too,  has  to  be  critical 
and  to  seem  cruel,  because  he  also  has  a  public  to  please 
with  his  estimate  ;  and  his  chosen  public  ought  to  be  no 
less  than  the  absolute  judge,  the  world  spirit  himself,  in 
whose  eyes  the  philosopher  can  find  favor  only  if  he  be  able 
to  sift  the  truth  from  the  error.  That  is  why  he  is  rigid. 
Nothing  but  an  absolute  critical  standard  ought  to  satisfy 


20  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

him,  because  he  wants  nothing  short  of  the  truth  itself. 
He  will  fail  to  get  it,  but  then,  as  I  have  said,  we  all  of  us 
fail  more  or  less  in  some  career  or  other ;  and  ths  meta- 
physician, with  his  one  talent  of  critical  estimate,  must  do 
what  he  can. 

Yet  I  hasten  to  correct  this  seemingly  too  lifeless  a 
picture  of  the  philosopher's  cruel  analysis  of  passion,  by 
a  reference  to  the  thoughts  upon  which  I  have  already 
dwelt.  From  the  often  disheartening  difficulties  and  in- 
completeness of  the  human  search  for  absolute  truth,  we 
who  read  philosophy  continually  find  ourselves  returning, 
hand  to  hand  with  the  author  himself,  to  the  world  of  the 
concrete  passions  which  he  criticises.  We  find  this  world 
at  each  return  more  fair  and  yet  more  serious,  because  we 
know  it  better.  The  sacred  tears  that  were  shed  in  it  are 
none  the  less  sacred  because  we  have  been  trying  to  find 
out  from  the  critic  what  they  meant.  Their  mystery, 
long  pried  into,  becomes  even  the  dearer  for  that.  The 
criticised  passions  become  like  old  letters,  treasured  up  by 
a  lover  after  his  dear  friend's  death,  —  often  read  and  re- 
read, until  the  reader  has  looked  at  every  curve  to  know 
why  it  was  traced  in  just  this  way.  He  has  found  out,  or 
not,  —  still  the  search  was  consoling.  So,  too,  we  have 
analyzed  our  long  past  life  ;  and  now  the  more  confidently 
may  we  henceforth  live  in  the  new  life  before  us.  We 
have  criticised,  so  much  the  more  cheerfully  may  we  en- 
joy. I  once  saw  something  of  a  pair  of  literary  lovers, 
friends  of  mine,  who,  being  a  trifle  reflective,  were  prone 
to  amuse  themselves  by  affecting  to  treat  each  other's  pro- 
ductions with  a  certain  editorial  coldness  and  severity  of 
critical  estimate.  They  wrote  poems  to  each  other,  sup- 
pressing or  changing  of  course  the  names,  and  then  each, 
wholly  ignoring  whom  this  poem  might  be  intended  to 
mean,  used  to  pick  the  other's  work  to  pieces  with  an  air 
of  gentle  and  pathetic  disdain.  "  Here  the  sentiment 
somehow  failed  to  justify  its  object,  being  expressed  un« 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.  21 

musically.  There  the  experiment  was  a  clever  one,  but 
the  lines  were  such  as  a  dispassionate  observer  (like  either 
of  us  who  should  happen  not  to  be  the  author)  could  not 
approve,  might  even  smile  at."  These  people  never  pre- 
cisely quarreled,  to  my  knowledge,  at  least  over  their  lit- 
erary criticism.  I  was  not  able  to  make  out  altogether 
why  they  did  this  sort  of  thing,  but,  so  far  as  I  could  dis- 
cover, they  both  liked  it,  and  were  the  better  lovers  for  it. 
I  conjecture  that  their  delight  must  have  resembled  the 
kind  of  joy  that  philosophical  students  take  in  analyzing 
life.  Let  me  admit  frankly :  it  is  indeed  the  joy,  if  you 
like,  of  playing  cat  and  mouse  with  your  dearest  other 
self.  It  is  even  somewhat  like  the  joy,  if  so  you  choose  to 
declare,  which  infants  take  in  that  primitive  form  of  hide 
and  seek  that  is  suited  to  their  months.  "  Where  is  my 
truth,  my  life,  my  faith,  my  temperament  ?  "  says  the  phi- 
losopher. And  if,  some  volumes  further  on  in  the  expo- 
sition of  his  system,  he  says,  "  Oh !  there  it  is,"  the  healthy 
babies  will  be  on  his  side  in  declaring  that  such  reflections 
are  not  wholly  without  their  rational  value.  But  why  do  I 
thus  apparently  degrade  speculation  by  again  deliberately 
comparing  it  with  a  game  ?  Because,  I  answer,  in  one 
sense,  all  consciousness  is  a  game,  a  series  of  longings  and 
of  reflections  which  it  is  easy  to  call  superfluous  if  wit- 
nessed from  without.  The  justification  of  consciousness 
is  the  having  of  it.  And  this  magnificent  play  of  the 
spirit  with  itself,  this  infantile  love  of  rewinning  its  own 
wealth  ever  anew  through  deliberate  loss,  through  seek- 
ing, and  through  joyous  recognition,  what  is  this,  indeed, 
but  the  pastime  of  the  divine  life  itself  ?  We  enter  into 
the  world  of  the  spirit  just  when  even  the  tragedy  of  life 
becomes  for  our  sight  as  much  a  divine  game  as  a  divine 
tragedy,  when  we  know  that  the  world  is  not  only  serious, 
terrible,  cruel,  but  is  also  a  world  where  a  certain  grim 
humor  of  the  gods  is  at  home  ;  when  we  see  in  it  a  world, 
too,  where  a  serene  and  childlike  confidence  is  justified,  a 


22  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

world  where  courage  is  in  place  as  well  as  reverence,  and 
sport  as  well  as  seriousness ;  where,  above  all,the  genius  of 
reflection,  expressing  at  once  vast  experience  of  life  and  a 
certain  infantile  cheerfulness  or  even  sportiveness  of  mood, 
rightfully  lets  itself  loose  in  the  freest  form,  now  assum- 
ing a  stern  and  critical  air,  now  demurely  analyzing,  as 
if  there  were  nothing  else  to  do,  now  prying  into  men's 
hearts  like  a  roguish  boy  playing  with  precious  jewels, 
now  pretending  that  all  faith  is  dead,  now  serenely  de- 
monstrating unexpected  truths,  and,  last  of  all,  plunging 
back  again  into  life  with  the  shout  of  them  that  triumph. 

VI. 

It  now  behooves  me,  in  conclusion,  to  say  something  of 
the  relation  of  a  course  of  lectures  like  the  one  herewith 
begun  to  the  technicalities  of  philosophical  study.  There 
is  a  great  deal  in  every  noteworthy  metaphysical  treatise 
which  can  be  grasped  only  by  special  study.  I  shall 
make  little  attempt  to  transgress  into  this  more  technical 
field  during  these  lectures.  I  must,  indeed,  discuss  topics 
which  only  a  rare  kindliness  on  your  part  can  make  clearly 
comprehensible,  for  they  are,  once  for  all,  serious  and  diffi- 
cult, but  I  do  not  understand  it  to  be  the  purpose  of  our 
present  discourse  to  give  what  in  the  University  would  be 
called  an  Introduction  to  the  literature  of  metaphysics 
proper.  The  only  question  that  can  arise  about  such  a 
proceeding  as  I  here  propose  is,  of  course,  a  question  as 
to  whether  it  is  worth  while  to  separate  the  general  con- 
sideration of  philosophical  tendencies  from  a  more  minute 
study  of  the  works  of  the  philosophers.  Such  a  question 
only  the  outcome  can  decide.  I  am  aware  that  it  is  hard 
to  be  historically  accurate  in  what  I  have  to  say  without 
being  much  more  specific  than  I  shall  have  time  to  be.  I 
must  warn  you  at  the  outset  that  a  full  and  fair  under- 
standing of  any  great  thinker  demands  a  knowledge,  both 
of  the  history  of  thought  in  general,  and  of  his  own  period 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.  23 

fn  particular,  which  it  is  very  hard,  even  for  the  profes- 
sional student,  after  years  of  study,  to  attain.  All  frag- 
mentary views,  meanwhile,  have  something  of  the  mislead- 
ing about  them.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  necessary 
imperfections  of  a  partial  expression  of  the  truth  never 
ought  to  discourage  us  from  expressing  all  the  truth  that 
we  can.  The  purpose  of  the  subsequent  lectures  will  in 
any  case  be  sufficiently  accomplished,  if  they  bring  you 
nearer  to  the  throbbing  heart  of  this  intense  modern 
speculative  interest,  so  that  you  shall  better  know  that 
warm  blood  flows  in  philosophic  veins. 

For  the  rest,  I  confess  to  you  that,  although  I  myself 
often  take  a  certain  personal  delight  in  the  mere  subtle- 
ties of  speculation,  although  I  also  enjoy  at  times  that 
miserliness  which  makes  the  professional  student  hoara 
up  the  jewels  of  reflection  for  the  sake  of  gloating  over 
their  mere  hardness  and  glitter,  I  find  always  that  when 
I  come  to  think  of  the  thing  fairly,  there  is,  after  all,  no 
beauty  in  a  metaphysical  system,  which  does  not  spring 
from  its  value  as  a  record  of  a  spiritual  experience.  I 
love  the  variety  of  the  philosophers,  as  I  love  the  variety 
of  the  thoughtful  looks  which  light  up  .earnest  young 
faces.  I  love  all  these  because  they  express  passion,  won- 
der, truth.  But  alas  for  me  if  ever  I  have  for  profes- 
sional reasons  to  study  a  book  behind  whose  technical 
subtleties  I  can  catch  no  glimpse  of  the  manly  heart  of  its 
author.  His  conclusions  may  be  sound.  I  shall  then 
hate  him  only  the  more  for  that.  Error  may  be  dull  if 
it  chooses  ;  but  there  is  no  artistic  blasphemy  equal  to  so 
placing  the  harp  of  truth  as  to  make  it  sound  harsh  and 
wooden  when  you  strike  it  fairly.  Philosophical  books  I 
have  read,  with  whose  doctrines,  as  doctrines,  I  have  even 
been  forced  in  great  measure  to  agree ;  and  yet,  so  life- 
less, so  bloodless,  were  their  authors,  so  reptilian  were  the 
cold  and  slowly  writhing  sentences  in  which  their  thought 
was  expressed,  that  I  have  laid  down  such  volumes  with  a 


24  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

sense  of  disgrace  and  rebellion,  "  bitterly  ashamed,"  as  a 
friend  of  mine  has  expressed  the  same  feeling  in  my  hear- 
ing, "  bitterly  ashamed  to  find  myself  living  in  a  universe 
whose  truth  could  possibly  be  made  so  inefficacious  and 
uninteresting."  To  be  sure,  in  saying  all  this  I  am  far 
from  desiring  to  make  technical  metaphysics  easy,  for  the 
study  is  a  laborious  one  ;  and  there  are  many  topics  in 
logic,  in  the  theory  of  the  sciences,  and  in  ethics,  to  whose 
comprehension  there  is  no  royal  road.  But  then,  once 
your  eyes  opened,  and  you  will  indeed  find  subjects  that  at 
first  seemed  dry  and  inhuman  full  of  life  and  even  )f  pas- 
sion ;  as,  for  instance,  few  sciences  are  in  their  elemen- 
tary truths  more  enticing  to  the  initiated,  more  coy  and 
baffling  to  the  reflective  philosophical  student,  in  fact, 
more  romantic,  than  is  the  Differential  Calculus.  But  if 
such  matters  lie  far  beyond  our  present  field,  I  mention 
them  only  to  show  that  even  the  hardest  and  least  popu- 
lar reflective  researches  are  to  be  justified,  in  the  long 
run,  by  their  bearings  upon  life. 


PART  I. 
STUDIES  OF  THINKERS  AND  PROBLEMS. 


LECTURE  H. 

THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY;  CHARACTERIS- 
TICS OF  THE  FIRST  PERIOD ;  ILLUSTRATION  BY  MEANS 
OF  THE  RELIGIOUS  ASPECT  OF  SPINOZISM. 

OUR  general  purpose  in  these  lectures  has  now  been 
denned.  As  we  pass  to  the  study  of  certain  representa- 
tive modern  thinkers  and  problems,  the  difference  between 
our  method  and  that  of  a  text-book,  or  of  a  regular  course 
of  academic  lectures  on  the  history  of  modern  thought, 
must  be  well  borne  in  mind.  We  wish  to  select  certain 
tendencies  especially  characteristic  of  the  spirit  of  modern 
philosophy.  We  shall  therefore  lay  most  stress  upon 
what  happened  in  the  culminating  period  of  modern 
thought,  —  that  from  Kant  to  Schopenhauer,  —  and  upon 
the  problems  that  seem  to  me  most  permanent  and  signifi- 
cant in  that  period  itself.  In  earlier  periods  our  method 
will  be  one  of  the  briefest  sketching.  Later  we  shall 
become  more  specific.  Of  no  thinker  before  Kant  shall 
we  give  any  extended  account.  ^  Several  thinkers  of  first 
rank,  such  as  Descartes,  Malebranche,  Leibnitz,  we  shall 
barely  mention  or  wholly  ignore.  Always,  even  where  we 
are  fullest  in  statement,  we  shall  select  those  aspects  of 
the  thinker  in  question  that  concern  our  own  undertak- 
ing. What  this  undertaking  will  lead  to  will  not  become 
manifest  until,  in  the  second  part  of  our  course,  we  have 
suggested  in  outline  a  certain  philosophical  creed  to  which 
I  wish  to  direct  your  attention. 

It  is  in  vain  that  one  seeks,  in  the  history  of  thought, 
to  choose  any  perfectly  satisfactory  place  of  beginning  f ot 


28  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

the  purpose  of  a  course  of  lectures  like  this.  Always  one 
must  run  a  risk  of  producing  the  illusion  in  your  minds 
that  the  point  where  he  chances  to  begin  is  somehow  pecu- 
liarly significant  as  a  beginning.  But  always,  of  course,  if 
you  should  ever  hereafter  come  to  look  deeper,  you  would 
find  this  point  of  beginning  very  arbitrary,  and  what  im- 
mediately preceded  it  vastly  important  for  the  true  under- 
standing of  the  whole  matter.  My  beginning,  therefore, 
as  I  must  warn  you,  will  be  indeed  very  arbitrary,  just  as 
my  methods  will  have  to  be  very  different  from  those  of 
a  text-book. 

I. 

As  to  the  general  scope  of  our  course,  modern  philoso- 
phy, our  topic  in  what  follows,  is  as  wealthy  and  complex 
an  evolution  in  its  way  as  is  the  life  which  it  depicts. 
What  we  call  modern  thought,  in  these  matters,  is  a  very 
recent  affair,  dating  back  only  to  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. Since  then,  however,  philosophy  has  lived  through 
several  great  periods,  which  for  our  purpose  we  may  re- 
duce to  three. 

The  first  period  was  one  of  what  we  may  call  natural- 
ism, pure  and  simple.  It  belongs  almost  wholly  to  the 
seventeenth  century.  The  philosophy  of  this  first  age 
lived  in  a  world  where  two  things  seemed  clear :  first, 

Vthat  nature  is  full  of  facts  which  conform  fatally  to  exact 
and  irreversible  law,  and  second,  that  man  lives  best  under 
a  strong,  a  benevolently  despotic  civil  government.  The 
philosophers  of  this  time  had  left  off  contemplating  the 
heaven  of  mediaeval  piety,  and  were  disposed  to  deify 
nature.  They  adored  the  rigidity  of  geometrical  meth- 
ods ;  they  loved  the  study  of  the  new  physical  science, 
/  which  had  begun  with  Galileo.  Man  they  conceived 
v/asa  mechanism.  Human  emotions,  even  the  loftiest, 
they~HeIIghtea  in  explaining  by  very  simple  and  funda- 
mental natural  passions.  There  is  often  something  mer- 
ciless and  cynical  about  their  analysis  of  many  things 


THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  29 

sacred  in  human  life.  They  are  cold,  formal,  systematic,^x 
at  least  as  to  the  outward  shape  of  their  doctrines.  At 
heart,  however,  they  are  not  without  a  deep  piety  of  their 
own.  The  nature  which  they  deify  has  its  magnificent 
dignity.  It  is  no  respecter  of  our  sentimentalities ;  but 
it  does  embody  a  certain  awful  justice.  You  would  pray 
to  it  in  vain  ;  but  you  may  interrogate  it  fearlessly,  for  it 
hides  no  charmed  and  magical  secrets  in  its  breast  which 
an  unlucky  word  might  render  dangerous  to  the  inquirer. 
It  notices  no  insult;  it  blasts  no  curious  questioner  for 
his  irreverence.  This  nature  is  a  wise  nature.-  Her  best 
children  are  those  who  labor  most  patiently  to  comprehend 
her  laws.  The  weak  she  crushes ;  but  the  thoughtful  she 
honors.  She  knows  no  miracles  ;  but  her  laws  are  an  in- 
exhaustible treasure  house  of  resources  to  the  knowing. 
In  fact,  knowledge  of  such  laws  is  the  chief  end  of  man's  \s 
life.  God  is  n't  any  longer  what  he  had  often  seemed  in 
more  clerical  ages,  —  a  God  that  hides  himself  from  the 
natural  and  unassisted  intellect  of  man.  He  showed  him- 
self of  old  to  the  Greek  geometers,  to  Euclid,  to  Archi- 
medes. In  these  days  of  the  seventeenth  century  he 
xmveils  new  mysteries  to  the  students  of  physics.  In  the 
world  of  such  a  ruler,  fear  is  out  of  place  ;  you  may  even 
doubt  if  you  will.  The  incredulous  are  no  longer  public 
enemies  ;  they  are  merely  the  learners.  Descartes,  a  rep- 
resentative thinker  of  the  century,  and  the  one  from  whom 
our  period  is  often  dated,  begins  his  reflection  by  doubt- 
ing everything.  As  for  the  method  of  escaping  from, 
doubt,  that  consists  in  the  use  of  reason  and  in  the  study 
of  the  facts  of  experience  ;  nothing  else  serves.  Revela- 
tion you  treat  with  such  respect  as  political  and  social 
considerations  require  ;  but  for  philosophy,  in  this  age  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  the  supernatural  has  only  a  sec- 
ondary interest,  if  it  has  any  interest  at  all.  Religious 
conformity  is  a  matter  of  policy ;  a  noisy  atheist  would 
be,  of  course,  a  cause  of  scandal,  and  might  even  bring 


/ 
Y/o 


80  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

philosophy  into  discredit.  Besides,  almost  every  serious 
philosopher  of  this  our  first  period  believes  in  God  as  in 
some  sense  the  source  of  nature.  It  is,  however,  not  well 
to  tell  the  unlearned  too  much  about  what  sort  of  God 
you  believe  in.  The  unlearned  are  gross,  still  dread 
witches,  carry  amulets,  know  nothing  of  geometry  ;  best 
be  cautious  of  speech  to  them.  Philosophy  makes  no 
propaganda,  appeals  to  philosophers,  lets  faith  alone. 
Besides,  loyalty  to  the  state  counsels  some  measure  of 
religious  conformity.  Hobbes,  the  great  Englishman, 
himself  a  speculative  materialist,  and,  as  I  fancy,  the 
most  well-knit  and  highly  organized  thinker  in  the  whole 
history  of  English  philosophy,  was  clear  that  whatever  a 
man's  opinion  might  be,  it  was  his  duty  to  submit  all 
matters  of  religious  conformity  to  the  judgment  of  the 
state.  "  I  submit,"  he  says  in  effect  somewhere,  "  to  the 
Church  of  England,  because  that  is  the  church  ordained 
for  me  by  the  will  of  my  sovereign,  the  king  of  England." 
And  this  confession  of  Hobbes  involves  no  hypocrisy.  It 
is  the  frankest  confession  in  the  world.  His  conformity 
is  openly  a  conformity  to  civil  laws.  Philosophy  and  reli- 
gion are  once  for  all  separated.  It  is  a  matter  of  acci- 
dent whether  the  philosopher  has  or  has  not  a  traditional 
creed  left  him  by  his  philosophy.  His  thought  is  no 
longer  the  handmaid  of  his  faith,  as  had  generally  been 
the  case  with  the  thinkers  of  the  Middle  Ages.  But  as 
for  his  faith  itself,  social  and  political  considerations  must 

__      ___     •  '      i  -     _         _  f.  _  ^^    ,|  __ 

decide  how  and  in  what  way  he  shall  give  evidence  of  it 
to  Ms  fellows.  His  very  loyalty,  his  good  citizenship,  his 
frank  benevolence,  counsel  prudence  of  speech. 

And  here  appears  again  another  side  of  the  philosophy 
of  this  first  period.     It  is  a  loyal  philosophy,  a  philosophy 
it  has  a  great  respect  for  the  highest 


political  interests  of  man  ;  it  studies  jurisprudence,  state- 
craft, international  law,  natural  justice  ;  it  founds  its  loy- 
alty, indeed,  upon  reason,  makes  little  of  the  divine  right 


THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.        81 

of  kings,  loves  to  declare  all  men  equal,  despises  tradi- 
tion in  social  matters,  throws  contempt  on  the  mere  cus- 
toms of  mankind,  looks  for  the  sanction  of  law  in  the 
eternal  and  just  order  of  the  world,  in  short  seeks  most 
distinctly  not  in  the  clouds,  but  here  upon  earth,  for  an 
abiding  city.  Hence,  it  generally  opposes  clerical  inter- 
ference in  political  matters ;  it  gives  to  the  kingdom  of 
God  a  naturalistic  interpretation,  takes  no  interest  in  the 
jeweled  walls  and  the  pearl  gates  of  a  scriptural  new 
Jerusalem,  but  undertakes  to  build  a  terrestrial  one  of  its 
own  on  a  geometrical  plan  of  modern  devising,  a  city 
not  without  foundations,  but  very  sober  as  to  ornamenta- 
tion. Better  a  rational  constitution  than  golden  streets. 

Does  this  first  period  of  modern  philosophy,  thus  very 
rudely  outlined  as  to  its  most  general  interests,  seem  to 
some  of  you  dishearteningly  uuspiritual?  Then  reflect, 
it  surely  has  not  pleased  God  to  save  his  people  by  an- 
archy ;  and  these  who  in  this  recent  century,  in  the  age 
when  science  first  grew  lusty  in  its  young  strength,  and 
when  the  sanctions  of  medisevalism  were  already  partly 
obsolete,  spoke  the  word  for  the  freedom  of  human  reason, 
and  the  reasonableness  of  good  order,  served  the  spiritual 
necessities  of  mankind  no  whit  the  less  because  they  told 
only  part  of  the  truth.  What  they  bequeathed  to  us  was 
a  faith  in  sober  realities,  a  reverence  for  the  dignity 
the  world  of  law,  a  love  of  lucidity,  for  which  we  canno 
thank  them  too  much.  As  to  their  deification  of  nature, 
it  was  surely  the  beginning  of  modern  wisdom,  an  insigh 
jhat  whatever  God  is,  he  is  not  far  from  every  one  of  us, 
a  turning  away  from  the  mere  gazing  up  into  heaven 
after  a  distant  and  ascended  divine  ruler,  a  sense  that  if 
the  spirit  is  indeed  poured  out  on  earth,  you  have  a  right 
to  look  upon  the  simplest  facts  as  containing  it.  These 
men  may  be  cold ;  for  my  part  I  find  a  clearness  abou 
the  snowy  mountain  summits  amongst  which  they  live, 
which  goes  far  to  compensate  for  the  hardness  of  the  out- 


as  x 
of  / 
ot[/ 


32  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

lines  of  their  world.  That  they,  too,  have  a  genuine  and 
lofty  piety  to  proclaim  to  us,  I  shall  try  to  exemplify  in 
the  case  of  Spinoza.  For  nature,  also,  has  its  divine  side ; 
the  hard,  clear  outlines  of  the  mountains  stand  out,  after 
all,  against  the  heavens  of  God.  He  who  reflects  upon 
our  human  love  of  clear  reason  and  of  sound  order  reflects 
upon  certain  of  the  deepest,  though  surely  not  upon  the 
hottest,  passions  of  man.  And  Spinoza,  as  we  shall  find, 
j£new  how  to  give  to  this  eternal  order  of  nature  a  mys- 
\/tical  and  almost  romantic  glamor.  Under  the  gently 
glowing  evening  twilight  of  his  peaceful  reflection,  these 
mountain  peaks,  if  we  may  yet  again  strain  our  figure, 
gleam  with  an  almost  ghostly  dignity,  and  seem  no  longer 
sharp  or  cruel.  Spinoza,  like  other  mystical  souls,  knows 
of  a  peace  which/the  world  of  sense  can  neither  give  nor 
take  away.  ^Pnis  peace  he  finds  in  an  absorbing  contem- 
plation of  the  divine  order  as  eternal  and  necessary.  It 
is  of  the  nature  of  reason,  he  says,  to  regard  all  things 
under  the  form  of  eternity.  So  regarded,  even  this  pas- 
sionate, struggling  life  of  ours  seems  an  apparition  of  the. 
changeless.  God  is  everywhere.  The  wise  man  asks  no 
happy  fortune  ;  his  unalterable  fortune  it  is  to  love  God 
with  the  same  love  wherewith  God  loves  himself. 

But  the  second  age  of  modern  philosophy,  rejecting 
this  sublime  indifference  to  the  concerns  of  the  individual 
human  being,  turned  curiously  back  to  the  study  of  the 
wondi'ous  inner  world  of  man's  soul.  To  deify  nature  is 
not  enough.  Man  is  the  most  interesting  thing  in  nature, 
and  he  is  not  yet  deified ;  nor  can  he  be  until  we  have 
won  a  true  knowledge  of  his  wayward  heart.  He  may  be 
a  part  of  nature's  mechanism,  or  he  may  not ;  still,  if  he 
be  a  mechanism,  he  is  that  most  paradoxical  of  things,  a 
knowing  mechanism.  His  knowledge  itself,  what  it  is, 
how  it  comes  about,  whence  he  gets  it,  how  it  grows,  what 
it  signifies,  how  it  can  be  defended  against  skepticism, 
what  it  implies,  both  as  to  moral  truth  and  as  to  theorcti- 


THE   PERIODS   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY.  33 

cal  truth,  —  these  problems  are  foremost  in  the  interests 
of  the  second  period  of  modern  thought,  whose  beginnings 
we  can  see  in  Locke,  and  whose  culmination  was  in  the 
philosophic  movement  that  expressed  itself,  towards  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  in  Kant's  '*  Critique  of 
Pure  Reason."  The  early  thinkers  of  this  period,  Locke, 
the  early  English  moralists,  Leibnitz,  belong  in  part  to 
the  first  period,  as  is  always  likely  to  be  the  case  in  such 
orderly  evolutions.  Gradually,  attention  is  turned  more 
and  more  from  the  outer  world  to  the  mind  of  man.  The 
first  period  had  been  one  of  naturalism ;  the  second  is  one 
of  a  sort  of  new  humanism.  In  th~e  first  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century  this  humanism  developed  the  works  of 
the  great  classical  representatives  of  English  ethics,  as 
well  as  the  idealism  of  Berkeley.  Reflection  is  now  more 
an  inner  study,  an  analysis  of  the  mind,  than  an  exami- 
nation of  the  business  of  physical  science.  Human  reason 
is  still  the  trusted  instrument,  but  it  soon  turns  its  criti- 
,cism_uj>on itself.  It  distinguishes  prejudices  from  axi- 
oms, fears  dogmatism,  scrutinizes  the  evidences  of  faith, 
suspects,  or  at  best  has  consciously  to  defend,  even  the 
apparently  irresistible  authority  of  conscience,  and  so 
comes  at  length,  in  the  person  of  the  greatest  of  the  Brit- 
ish eighteenth  century  thinkers,  David  Hume,  to  a  ques- 
tioning even  of  its  own  capacity  to  know  truth,  a  doubt- 
ing attitude  which  brings  philosophy  into  a  sharp  and 
admitted  opposition  to  common  sense.  At  this  point, 
however,  a  new  interest  begins  in  Europe.  If  the  age 
was  already  disposed  to  self-analysis,  Rousseau,  with  his 
paradoxes  and  his  even  pathological  love  of  limitless  self- 
scrutiny,  introduced  into  this  man-loving  period  a  senti- 
mental tendency,  from  which,  erelong,  came  a  revival  of 
passion,  of  poetry,  and  of  enthusiasm,  whose  influence  we 
shall  never  outgrow.  Contemporaneous  with  this  influ- 
ence was  the  appearance  of  the  modern  romance  in  its 
early  forms.  Not  much  later  came  the  "  Storm  and 


84  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Stress  "  period  of  German  literature,  and  by  the  time  this 
had  run  its  course,  the  French  Revolution,  overthrowing 
all  the  mechanical  restraints  of  civilization,  demonstrated 
afresh  to  the  world's  outer  sense  the  central  importance  of 
passion  in  the  whole  life  of  humanity. 

The  philosophy  of  Kant,  developing  in  the  quiet  soli- 
tudes of  his  professorial  studies  at  Konigsberg,  in  far 
eastern  Prussia,  reflected  with  a  most  wonderful  ingenuity 
the  essential  interests  of  the  time  when  all  this  transfor- 
mation was  preparing.  In  1781,  he  published  his  "  Cri- 
tique of  Pure  Reason,"  nearly,  if  not  quite,  the  most 
important  philosophical  treatise  ever  written.  The  essen- 
tial doctrine  of  this  book  is  the  thought  that  man's  nature 
is  the  real  creator  of  man's  world.  It  is  n't  the  external 
world,  as  such,  that  is  the  deepest  truth  for  us  at  all ;  it 
is  the  inner  structure  of  the  human  spirit  which  merely 
expresses  itself  in  the  visible  nature  about  us.  The  inter- 
est of  Kant's  presentation  of  this  paradoxical  thought 
lay  not  so  much  in  the  originality  of  the  conception,  for 
philosophers  never  invent  fundamental  beliefs,  and  this 
idea  of  Kant's  is  as  old  as  deeper  spiritual  faith  itself ; 
but  rather  in  the  cool,  reflective,  mercilessly  critical  in- 
genuity with  which  he  carries  it  out.  Issued  several 
years  before  the  French  Revolution,  the  book  seems  a  sort 
of  deliberate  justification  of  the  proud  consciousness  of 
man's  own  absolute  rights  with  which,  in  that  mighty 
struggle,  the  human  spirit  rose  against  all  external  re- 
straints, and  declared,  as  we  in  America  had  already 
showed  men  how  to  do,  that  the  true  world  for  humanity 
is  the  world  which  the  freeman  makes,  and  that  the  genu- 
uinely  natural  order  is  one  which  is  not  external  until 
reason  decrees  that  it  shall  exist. 

And  herewith  begins  what  I  have  ventured  to  call  in 
its  wholeness  the  third  period  of  modern  philosophy,  a 
period  not  yet  ended.  The  great  thoughts  of  Kant  ruled 
the  philosophic  reflection  of  the  next  fifty  years  after  the 


THE   PERIODS  OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY.  35 

appearance  of  the  "  Critique,"  with  what  extravagancies 
and  with  what  excellencies  of  result  we  shall  in  a  meas- 
ure see  hereafter.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  this  doc- 
trine of  Kant's  is  the  very  soul  of  all  our  modern  life, 
not,  I  repeat,  as  if  the  philosopher  had  invented  it,  but 
because  once  for  all  this  is  the  essentially  humane  view  of 
reality.  You  can  easily  make  wild  and  romantic  misuse 
of  it.  But  when  rightly  interpreted,  Kant's  world,  where 
the  inner  reason  is  lord  over  the  outer  sense,  will  prove  to 
be  as  hard  and  fast  a  world  of  fact,  of  law,  and  of  eter- 
nal majesty,  as  ever  the  seventeenth  century  had  con- 
ceived. At  all  events,  whether  we  will  it  or  no,  in  this 
universe  of  Kant's  philosophy  we  all  still  live. 

But  the  outcome  of  these  fifty  years  of  post-Kantian 
speculation  was,  after  all,  an  unfinished  organization  of 
philosophic  thought.  The  undertaking  was  too  vast  for 
one  generation.  After  a  period  of  speculative  quiescence, 
a  period  when  attention  was  directed  away  from  philoso- 
phy by  other  human  concerns,  this,  our  third  period  of 
modern  thought,  has  come  to  see  a  revival  of  philosophic 
activity,  a  revival  in  the  midst  of  which  we  now  live.  To 
the  legacy  of  Kant  has  been  added  the  wealth  of  prob- 
lems offered  to  us  by  recent  advances  in  natural  science 
and  in  the  study  of  the  history  of  humanity.  The  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  itself  no  novelty  in  opinion,  has  re- 
ceived a  wholly  unlooked-for  empirical  formulation  and 
confirmation.  The  sciences  have  grown  until  no  one  can 
even  remotely  hope  to  overlook  their  whole  field.  In  con- 
sequence, however,  external  nature  has  once  more  gained 
for  us  a.n  imposing  authority  which  makes  us  in  many 
ways  sympathize  afresh  with  the  pure  naturalism  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  Man  we  once  more  see  to  be,  not 
merely  the  sentimental  rebel  and  creative  hero  of  Rous- 
seau and  the  romanticists,  not  merely  the  organ  of  the 
world-forming  reason  of  the  Kantian  schools,  but  also, 
and  just  as  truly,  the  mechanism  which  the  seventeenth 


86  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

century  declared  him  to  be.  How  can  he  be  both  these 
things,  that  is,  both  natural  and  spiritual  ?  How  can  he 
have  sprung  from  an  animal  ancestry,  yes,  ultimately  from 
dead  matter,  and  yet  be  the  embodiment,  the  organ  of  the 
absolute  reason  ?  How  can  he  at  once  be  part  of  the  spirit 
whose  live  thinking  dreams  out  this  whole  frame  of  things, 
and  yet  he  himself  the  slave  of  the  very  order  of  nature 
which  this  dream  creates  ?  How  can  he,  this  mere  me- 
chanism, this  creature  of  nerves,  this  mortal  thing  whose 
brain  secretes  thought,  be  also,  as  Kant  made  him,  the 
very  source  of  the  laws  of  nature  themselves  ?  How  com- 
prehend this  paradox?  Well,  I  answer,  after  all,  it  is 
the  ancient  paradox  of  the  double  nature  of  man.  It 
would  be  unpardonably  absurd  even  to  mention  such  a 
strange  problem,  were  it  not  so  real,  so  pertinacious,  so 
every  day  a  matter,  were  it  not  absolutely  forced  on  us 
afresh  by  every  new  word  of  modern  science,  as  by  every 
old  word  of  the  devotional  books.  And  this  problem,  I 
insist,  is  now  in  the  forefront  of  speculation  as  it  never 
was  before  :  in  what  sense,  with  what  prospect  of  solu- 
tion, with  what  beauty  of  statement,  with  what  depth  of 
significance,  with  what  manifold  illustration  in  facts,  with 
what  passionate  longing  of  inquiry,  I  should  be  glad,  in- 
deed, if  I  could  hope  to  express  in  the  subsequent  lectures 
of  this  course.  And  so,  for  the  first,  our  rude  sketch 
is  before  us.  How  much  I  desire  to  suggest  its  signifi- 
cance, let  one  brief  illustration  suffice  to  show  ere  I  go 
further. 

There  is  a  certain  earlier  and  idealistic  drama  of  Ibsen's 
which  the  current  public  interest  in  that  remarkable 
poet  seems  still  disposed  to  neglect  altogether.  I  mean 
the  drama  entitled  "Emperor  and  Galilean."  In  this 
play  the  author  introduces  the  apostate  Emperor  Julian, 
struggling  to  replace  the  kingdom  whose  authority  is  not 
of  this  world,  by  an  imperial  power  whose  aims  and 
sanctions  shall  be  earthly,  naturalistic,  human,  and  whow 


THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY.  37 

ideals  shall  not  look  beyond  any  man's  sepulchre.  When 
the  power  of  the  romantic  apostate  is  already  on  the 
wane,  he  converses,  in  one  scene,  with  his  confidential  ad- 
viser, the  heathen  seer  and  mystic,  Maximos.  The  em- 
peror is  by  this  time  weary  of  the  strife,  fearful  of  the 
end.  "  Will  the  Galilean  conquer  ?  "  he  cries.  And  he 
calls  upon  Maximos,  as  reader  of  portents,  to  prophesy. 
Who  shall  win,  he  says,  in  this  struggle?  Is  the  king- 
dom that  is  from  above  to  destroy  the  kingdom  of  this 
earth  ?  Or  will  the  legions  and  the  natural  order  be  able 
to  withstand  the  unearthly  power  of  this  wondrous  and 
unseen  world  of  spiritual  influences  ?  Maximos  answers 
darkly.  Neither  can  succeed,  he  declares.  Both  powers, 
both  kingdoms,  the  earthly  and  the  unearthly,  shall  fall. 
That  is  fate.  "  But  what,  then,  shall  take  their  place  ?  " 
cries  Julian.  "  Who  is,  then,  the  right  ruler  ?  "  "  He," 
answers  Maximos,  "  in  whom  both  Emperor  and  Galilean  " 
shall  be  joined.  There  is  to  come,  he  prophesies,  the  third 
realm,  neither  of  earth  alone,  nor  yet  of  heaven  alone,  — 
44  God-Caesar,  Caesar-God,  Caesar  in  the  kingdom  of  the 
Spirit,  God  in  the  realm  of  the  flesh."  44  This,  Julian," 
declares  Maximos,  "  is  the  third  realm,  for  in  it  alone  can 
be  fulfilled  the  word,  4  Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that 
are  Caesar's,  and  unto  God  the  things  that  are  God's.' ' 
For  only  in  such  a  realm,  runs  the  thought  of  Maximos, 
will  the  earthly  and  the  supernatural,  once  wholly  in  unity, 
cease  to  have  conflicting  and  irreconcilable  claims.  Fate, 
holds  Maximos,  will  yet  bring  this  thing  to  pass,  but  not, 
indeed,  in  these  times  of  Julian. 

I  do  not  feel  these  words  of  Ibsen's  to  be  more  than 
merely  suggestive.  I  do  not  pretend  to  find  in  them  any- 
thing final.  But  I  cannot  do  better,  as  I  try  to  give  here 
some  faint  notion  of  the  vast  historical  process  whereof 
all  this  reflective  philosophy  forms  so  subordinate  a  part, 
than  to  point  out  that  the  third  realm,  of  which  Ibsen 
BO  mystically  speaks,  the  realm  where  a  rigid  order  of 

1  ; 


88  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

nature  shall  be  one  with  the  most  miraculously  significant 
divine  truth,  where  Caesar  shall  become  a  spiritual,  and 
God  an  earthly  ruler,  is  precisely  the  realm  which  not  so 
much  our  philosophy,  but  our  age,  whose  echo  this  phi- 
losophy is,  is  even  now  seeking  to  comprehend,  and  with 
prophetic  voice  to  proclaim. 

H. 

Let  us  return  to  our  first  period.  A  long  course  of 
lectures  would  be  needed  to  give  you  any  full  account  of 
its  significance.  Let  me  dwell  a  moment  once  more  upon 
three  things  of  importance  concerning  its  representative 
thinkers. 

As  to  the  first  matter :  I  have  already  suggested  that 
philosophy,  in  those  days  of  the  seventeenth  century,  was 
much  Influenced  by  the  example  of  physical  science. 
The  modern  method  of  what  is  called  induction,  that  is, 
the  method  of  finding  the  laws  of  nature  from  a  careful 
collection  and  study  of  facts,  won  its  first  great  triumphs 
in  the  work  of  Galileo  and  of  his  contemporaries  and 
immediate  successors  in  physical  science.  The  Galilean 
method  of  studying  nature  was  for  that  age  one  of  won- 
derful novelty  and  fruitf ulness.  Galileo,  as  you  know,  in- 
troduced the  fashion  of  making  exact  experiments  under 
artificially  simplified  physical  conditions.  Such  experi- 
ments showed  in  intelligible  form  how  natural  things  really 
behave.  Nature,  as  you  see  her  in  gross,  is  too  complex 
for  our  simple  minds.  She  hides  her  secrets  from  our 
untrained  reason,  by  revealing  them  all  at  once.  Experi- 
ment separates  out  particular  groups  of  facts,  and  exam- 
ines them  alone.  Thus  experiment  aids  the  weakness  of 
our  reason,  in  its  effort  to  find  nature  reasonable.  Ex- 
periment so  stands  for  a  sort  of  cross-questioning  of 
nature.  The  answers  to  our  questions  show  us  the  ration- 
ality of  things.  But  Galileo  did  not  make  such  experi- 
ments at  random.  He  thought  out  well  what  questions  to 


THE  PERIODS   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  39 

ask  nature.  That  is,  by  acute  observation  of  what  one 
might  call  the  general  trend  of  things  in  some  part  of 
nature,  Galileo  made  exact  and  mathematically  stateable 
hypotheses  as  to  the  true  laws  at  work.  So  he  did,  for 
instance,  in  case  of  the  facts  about  falling  bodies,  and  in 
case  of  the  facts  about  bodies  rolling  down  inclines. 
When  he  had  made  his  scientific  guess,  his  hypothesis,  he 
applied,  if  necessary,  mathematics  to  this  guess,  and  com- 
puted what  ought  to  happen,  if  it  were  true,  in  certain 
definite  cases,  such  as  an  experiment  could  artificially 
bring  to  pass.  Then,  and  not  till  then,  he  tested  the  hy- 
pothesis by  the  experiment  itself.  He  asked  nature,  "  Is 
it  so  and  so  with  you,  as  my  hypothesis  demands,  in  this 
special  case,  that  it  shall  be  ?  "  If  nature,  questioned 
through  experiment,  responded  "  Yes,"  then  the  hypothe- 
sis was  verified,  and  the  law  was  regarded  as  in  its  own 
proper  measure  established.  Thus  reason  triumphed  over 
brute  fact. 

The  brilliant  successes  of  this  Galilean  method  during 
his  own  and  the  following  generations  were,  as  I  have  said, 
immensely  impressive  to  that  whole  century.  Nature  had 
at  last  been  made  to  answer  multitudinous  sharp  ques- 
tions. And  the  noteworthy  thing  was  that  her  answers 
were  so  exact,  and  that  her  laws,  when  you  found  them, 
were  so  rigid,  so  capable  of  mathematical  precision  of 
statement,  so  general.  Mechanical  science,  thus  early 
and  very  rapidly  progressing,  soon  suggested  of  itself  the 
thought  that  nature  was  all  one  vast  mechanism.  The 
philosophers,  with  their  love  of  grand  generalizations, 
easily  seized  upon  this  idea.  They  tried  to  expound  it, 
to  reflect  upon  it,  to  defend  it,  to  develop  its  meaning. 
Just  imagine  it  for  a  moment :  eould  one  only  seize  upon 
the  genuine  and  all-embracing  hypothesis,  could  one  but 
guess  by  good  luck  at  the  one  absolute  law  of  laws,  as 
Galileo  had  guessed  at  the  law  of  the  falling  bodies! 
Would  not  one  then  have  an  hypothesis  whereof  every 


40  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

fact  of  physical  nature  would  be  a  case,  a  verification,  an 
experimental  justification  ?  Such  a  law,  if  you  found  it, 
—  would  it  not  be  mechanical,  like  Galileo's  special  laws  ? 
So,  at  least,  the  century  declared.  But  there  was  the  other 
side  to  this  idea,  a  side  which  suggests  my  second  point. 
If  this  was  so,  if  these  exact  laws,  which  so  perfectly  an- 
swer the  demands  of  our  reason,  are  true  of  things,  then 
is  n't  this  world  about  us  one  that  deaf  thinking,  exact 
definition,  is  especially  fitted  to  comprehend  ?  Previous 
ages  had  found  the  world  mysterious,  and  had  appealed 
to  faith,  which  reason  could  only  supplement.  This  new 
age  is  sure  of  reason,  makes  it  lord,  reveres  it  as  the 
'one  revealer  of  mysteries,  and  as  capable  of  discovering 
absolute  truth.  But  this  once  more  brings  me  yet  a  step 
further,  namely,  to  my  third  point.  Clear  thinking  about 
nature  needs  a  good  model.  Galileo  and  all  the  other 
men  of  the  new  time  had  such  a  model  before  them  in  th<j 
geometrical  science  that  had  come  down  from  the  Greeks. 
The  hypotheses  that  Galileo  made  were  of  a  sort  long 
since  known  in  geometry,  namely,  mathematically  exact 
statements,  from  which  sharp  conclusions  could  be  drawn 
for  verification  or  refutation.  He  showed  how  to  apply 
such  hypotheses  to  nature,  namely,  by  means  of  crucial  ex- 
periments. But  the  idea  of  the  clearly  thought  hypothesis 
was  old.  Very  well,  then,  Galileo's  successes  suggested 
that  geometry  is  indeed  the  model  science,  that  nature, 
being  reasonable,  geometrizes,  so  to  speak,  throughout  all 
her  world  of  things,  so  that  if  you  could  once  get  her 
laws  in  mind,  as  Euclid  got  his  axioms,  then  all  the  facts 
of  nature  down  to  the  least  would  become  as  clear,  as  cer- 
tain, as  demonstrable  to  you  as  Euclid's  theorems  are  to 
the  student  of  mathematics.  Such  a  notion  it  is  which  is 
the  common  property  of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  was 
the  presupposition  of  that  time,  the  cold  but  deep  passion 
of  exact  rationality,  upon  which  the  philosophers  reflected, 
and  in  terms  of  which  they  taught.  Hence  it  was  that 
they  loved  mathematical  methods  in  philosophy. 


THE  PERIODS   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  41 

These  three  ideas,  then,  that  nature  is  a  mechanism, 
that  human  reason  is  competent  to  grasp  the  truth  of 
nature,  and  that,  since  nature's  truth  is  essentially  mathe- 
matical, geometry  is  the  model  science,  whose  precision 
and  necessity  philosophy,  too,  must  imitate,  —  these  are 
the  ideas  of  our  first  period.  Descartes  shares  them  with 
Hobbes.  The  widest  divergence  of  opinion  does  not  ex- 
clude them  anywhere,  in  the  representative  men  of  that 
day.  Human  nature  also  is  interpreted  in  terms  of  them. 

But  how,  you  may  ask,  can  such  an  age  as  this  grasp 
the  whole  breadth  and  depth  of  the  deeper  passions  of 
humanity  ?  Man  is  n't  merely  a  computer,  nor  yet  a 
geometer.  He  estimates,  he  appreciates  his  world;  he 
does  n't  merely  long  to  describe  it  in  mathematical  terms  ; 
he  has  religious  interests,  too  ;  and  what  have  Galilean 
physics  and  Euclidean  geometry  to  say  of  these  ?  Well,  I 
have  already  observed  that  our  seventeenth  century  knew 
of  such  a  thing  as  a  philosophical  religion,  and  my  illus- 
tration of  that  fact  is  the  man  who  was  in  many  respects 
the  deepest  speculator  of  that  whole  age,  namely,  Spinoza, 
to  whom  I  may  now  pass. 

in. 

Every  one  has  heard  something  of  the  marvelous  and 
lonely  Jewish  philosopher,  who,  separated  from  the  world 
of  European  cultivation  by  his  race,  and  from  his  own 
people  by  his  heresy,  devoted  himself  to  peaceful  and  fear- 
less reflection,  and  died  early,  not  without  leaving  an  im- 
mortal treatise  behind  him.  And  every  one  must  have  no- 
ticed how  singularly  varied  is  the  view  of  Spinoza  that  one 
gets  from  those  who  know  him  more  or  less  superficially. 
In  his  own  age  he  was  denounced  as  atheist,  profane  per- 
son, monster.  Long  afterwards,  however,  his  works  were 
re-discovered,  greedily  read,  admired  by  great  poets  like 
Goethe,  and  by  ardent  and  even  romantic  philosophers 
like  Schelling;  and  now  he  has  become  an  authority 


42  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

for  all  students  of  philosophy,  a  necessary  part  of  the 
knowledge  of  every  one  who  would  comprehend  modern 
thought.  This  great  thinker  himself  was,  to  be  sure,  no 
universal  genius  in  philosophy.  His  doctrine,  compared 
with  those  that  have  come  since,  is  comparatively  simple, 
clear  cut,  crystalline  in  its  hardness  and  isolation,  and 
yet,  how  many-sided  even  this  crystal,  how  varied  the 
impressions  that  it  has  produced  on  those  who  have  seen 
it  in  different  lights  !  Judging  by  some  of  the  commen- 
tators of  Spinoza,  you  would  regard  him  as  merely  a  lover 
of  mathematical  clearness  and  coldness  of  statement,  as  a 
believer  in  the  hard  and  fast,  eternal,  but  purely  natural 
order  of  things.  Others,  on  the  contrary,  have  called 
him,  in  a  phrase  that  has  been  too  often  repeated,  "  a  God- 
intoxicated  man,"  so  that,  far  from  being  an  atheist,  it  was 
the  existence  of  nature  that  he  in  truth  denied.  Others 
have  named  him  a  mystic,  a  seer,  a  prophet ;  have  taken, 
as  the  young  Goethe  took,  an  almost  sentimental  interest 
in  him  ;  have  found  his  doctrine  poetical  and  romantic. 
Others  still  have  prized  in  him  the  gentle  humility  of  life. 
He  won,  as  we  learn,  not  only  the  respect  of  certain  great 
men  in  his  own  time  (who  knew  him  mainly  from  afar 
and  by  letter),  but  also  the  love  of  the  few  homely  and 
obscure  people  with  whom  he  daily  and  personally  asso- 
ciated ;  and  this  has  led  one  of  his  eulogizers,  Ernst 
Renan,  to  remind  us  enthusiastically  that  "  nothing  is 
worth  so  much  as  the  judgment  of  the  little  ones,  for  it  is 
almost  always  the  judgment  of  God." 

What,  then,  was  Spinoza  ?  The  cold  and  merciless 
mathematical  thinker,  the  remorseless  fatalist  that  some 
call  him  ;  or  the  romantic  and  poetic  soul,  the  mystic,  the 
seer ;  or,  finally,  the  saint  of  gracious  and  gentle  life  that 
others  find  him  ?  In  fact,  Spinoza  had  something  of  all 
these  traits  in  his  character  and  in  his  thought.  Were  I 
expounding  his  system  in  full  I  should  make  you  feel  this 
fact.  It  is  already  a  satisfaction  to  be  able  to  say  that 


THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  43 

the  least  wealthy  of  the  systems  which  we  are' to  consider 
expressed  so  wide  an  experience  of  life,  reflected  upon  so 
varied  a  group  of  human  attitudes  in  the  presence  bf  the 
divine  order.  But  still  it  is  not  for  the  purpose  of  a 
panegyric  of  Spinoza  that  I  now  ask  your  attention  to 
him.  His  personal  character  cannot  detain  us  very  long. 
Nor  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  can  we  give  much  time  to  ex- 
amining the  technical  details  of  his  system.  It  was  in- 
deed a  many-sided  doctrine,  and  in  some  of  its  aspects 
highly  problematic.  Its  sources,  its  growth,  and  its  mean- 
ing have  in  recent  times  been  the  topic  of  elaborate 
researches,  of  which  I  can  give  you  no  fair  notion  here. 
I  shall  dwell  upon  but  a  single  aspect  of  the  whole,  and 
this  is  the  religious  aspect;  for  Spinoza  had  a  religion. 
There  is,  then,  this  one  thing  in  his  teaching  that  I  wish  to 
illustrate,  and,  if  possible,  to  explain.  This  is  the  deep 
piety  which  in  Spinoza's  mind  is  not  only  consistent  with 
the  belief  in  a  rigid,  mechanical  order  of  nature,  but 
which  is  even  involved,  according  to  him,  in  the  very 
expression  of  such  a  doctrine  concerning  nature. 

Had  Spinoza  been  any  one  but  himself,  he  would  have 
been  a  materialist,  a  cynic,  and,  indeed,  the  cold  and 
merciless  thinker  that  many,  misled  by  one-sided  views, 
have  declared  him  to  be.  Because  he  was  a  man  of 
profound  character,  he  looked  upon  the  whole  order  of 
things,  and  said,  "  While  it  is  necessary,  while  it  is  rigid, ' 
while  it  is  in  one  sense  merciless,  it  is  also  divine,  and  the 
value  of  our  knowledge  of  this  order  is  that  thereby  we 
are  led  to  a  love  of  God,  to  a  peace  which  the  world  can- 
not give  or  take  away." 

It  is  surely  the  office  of  philosophic  reflection  to  bring 
out  the  deeper  problems  of  our  nature.  And  nowhere  else 
can  one  find  a  more  significant  problem  than  this,  that  he 
who  looks  upon  the  world  solely  with  the  eye  of  reason 
finds  himself,  when  once  possessed  of  Spinoza's  wisdom, 
forced  to  adore.  Listen,  then,  in  Spinoza's  case,  to  the 


44  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

tale  of  the  religious  experience  of  a  great  heretic,  whom 
many  men  used  to  denounce  as  atheist. 

The  external  facts  of  Spinoza's  life,  so  far  as  they  con- 
cern us,  must  be  very  briefly  summarized.  A  colony  of 
Spanish  and  Portuguese  Jews,  refugees  from  persecution, 
was,  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
resident  in  Amsterdam,  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  freedom 
of  the  Dutch  republic.  A  son  of  a  poor  family,  mem- 
bers of  this  Jewish  community,  Spinoza  was  born  in  the 
year  1632.  He  was  early  distinguished  as  a  studious  boy 
for  his  learning  in  the  mediaeval  literature  of  the  Jews ; 
he  was  an  enthusiastic  reader  of  Talmudic  interpreters  and 
commentators  ;  but  he  was  also  not  without  a  wide  curios- 
ity that  led  him  to  the  study  of  the  learned  language  of 
the  day,  namely,  Latin,  and  to  an  early  acquaintance  with 
thought  that  lay  far"beyond  the  circle  of  the  intolerant 
interests  of  his  fellows.  These  studies  of  profane  learn- 
ing led  to  suspicions  of  his  orthodoxy,  and  a  series  of 
events  followed  of  which  we  have  only  extremely  untrust- 
worthy accounts  from  two  of  his  early  biographers. 
What  happened  we  do  not  precisely  know.  Report  says 
that  companions  and  fellow-students  of  Spinoza,  having 
drawn  from  him  heretical  views  concerning  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  Scriptures,  revealed  the  facts  to  the  authori- 
ties of  the  synagogue ;  and  that  Spinoza  was  called  to 
account,  and  was  urged  in  more  ways  than  one,  namely, 
by  bribes  as  well  as  by  threats,  to  abandon  his  heresy  or  to 
remain  silent.  The  affair,  whatever  it  was,  seems  to  have 
extended  over  several  years ;  it  ended  in  the  excommuni- 
cation of  Spinoza,  in  the  year  1656.  Thenceforth  he  was 
alone  and  free.  To  most  other  men  this  loneliness  would 
have  meant  destruction.  Even  for  Spinoza  it  led  to  cer- 
tain defects  of  thought  and  expression  which  are  not  with- 
out significance  for  his  system  as  a  whole.  Spinoza  had 
thenceforth  no  reason  to  appeal  in  the  least  to  the  preju- 
dices and  learning  of  his  former  co-religionists.  He 


THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  45 

seems  rather  anxious  in  all  his  philosophical  writings  to 
say  little  of  his  relation  to  Jewish  philosophy,  and  con- 
siderable difference  of  opinion  exists  among  competent 
inquirers  as  to  the  actual  relation  between  his  own  phi- 
losophical doctrines  and  those  which,  from  time  to  time, 
had  been  put  in  form  by  Jewish  mediaeval  writers.  At 
all  events,  however,  he  was  rather  a  man  of  his  time  than 
a  Jew.  His  system  has  a  closer  connection  with  that  of 
Descartes  and  with  those  of  other  prominent  European 
thinkers  than  with  any  Jewish  doctrines.  One  of  his 
books,  indeed,  has  a  special  relation  to  the  studies  of  his 
early  youth.  It  is  a  book  on  freedom  of  opinion,  called 
the  "  Theologico-Political  Tractate."  The  essence  of  the 
doctrine  is  that  both  the  formation  and  the  expression  of 
opinion  should  be  entirely  unhindered  by  legal  interfer^ 
ence.  In  the  course  of  the  book,  Spinoza  enters  upon  an 
elaborate  historical  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  litera- 
ture, and,  in  many  respects,  curiously  suggests  analogies 
to  the  results  of  modern  critical  study  of  the  Bible.  But 
in  all  his  other  writings  Spinoza  is  simply  the  speculative 
thinker.  His  life  in  his  exclusion  from  the  Jewish  com- 
munity is  as  simple  and  uneventful  as  ever  the  experience 
of  a  philosopher  has  been.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  peculiar 
privilege  of  the  philosopher  to  live  in  a  certain  separation 
from  human  responsibility,  which  leaves  him  free  to  criti- 
cise the  life  that  no  longer  enchains  him.  It  is  at  once 
his  privilege  and  his  danger,  for  freedom  from  the  bond- 
age of  life  may  easily  mean  disorganization  or  morbidness 
of  life.  Spinoza,  however,  was  not  only  forced  to  live 
apart  from  the  world,  but  was  able  to  win  spiritual  health 
in  his  isolation ;  and  the  result  of  such  separation  from 
the  passions  of  humanity  shows  itself  all  the  more  plainly 
in  a  power  of  dispassionate  criticism  which  is  the  very 
life  of  philosophy.  One  limitation  remains,  however, 
especially  noteworthy  in  Spinoza's  case.  His  form  of  iso- 
lation renders  him  a  poor  critic  of  the  deeper  social  rela- 


46  THE   SPIRIT  OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

tionships.  In  fact,  had  Spinoza  lived  in  an  age  of  great 
poetical  production,  this  dispassionate  loneliness  of  expe- 
rience would  have  rendered  him  much  less  competent  than 
he  was  to  reword  the  meaning  of  his  time.  But  in  an 
age  of  investigation  he  was  enabled  to  be  a  model  critic, 
for  the  interest  of  humanity  then  lay  in  comprehending 
the  natural  order  of  things,  and  one  does  not  need  a  rich 
experience  of  social  life  to  give  expression  to  the  inner 
meaning  of  an  undertaking  like  this. 

IV. 

If  one  turns,  however,  from  the  thinker  himself  to  his 
thought,  it  is  next  necessary  for  us  to  see  what  drove 
Spinoza  to  his  patient  and  life-long  business  of  reflection 
upon  so  dry  and  apparently  lifeless  a  thing  as  the  mathe- 
matical and  rigid  laws  of  external  nature.  And  here 
meets  us  the  most  noteworthy  fact  of  all  about  our  phi- 
losopher. I  have  already  said  that  the  outcome  of  Spi- 
noza's reflection  is  an  adoration,  an  immovably  peaceful 
reverence,  for  God's  eternal  order.  What  I  have  not  yet 
said  is,  that  the  longing  for  such  an  object  of  adoration 
is  the  beginning  as  well  as  the  end  of  his  whole  work. 
Spinoza  has  left  us,  in  an  essay  on  "  The  Improvement  of 
the  Understanding,"  a  sort  of  confession  of  the  course  of 
thinking  which  led  him  to  his  final  faith.  This  confession 
brings  us  at  once  upon  ground  that  is  familiar  to  every 
one  who  knows  well  the  religious  passion  of  humanity. 

The  higher  religious  consciousness  has  its  origin  in  the 
human  heart  in  two  interests: .!  One  is  the  interest  of  the 
moral  being  in  finding  some  Authority  that  may  guide  him^ 
in  the  conduct  of  his  life.  ;  The  other  is  the  interest  of 
the  baffled  and  disappointed  soul  in  coming  into  the  pres- 
ence of  some  external  truth,  some  reality  that  is  perfect, 
that  lacks  our  weakness,  that  is  victorious  even  though  we 
fail,  that  is  good  even  though  we  are  worthless.  I  must 
pause  a  moment  to  define  and  illustrate  these  two  inter- 


THE   PERIODS   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  47 

ests.  They  are  both  of  them  well  known  to  all  of  you, 
whether  you  have  succeeded  in  satisfying  either  of  them 
or  not.  What  you  do  not  always  see,  until  you  reflect,  is 
that  they  are  really  two  interests,  that  they  are  often  very 
hard  to  reconcile,  that  they  lead  you  by  two  very  different 
roads  to  faith,  and  are  likely  to  lead  to  two  sharply  con- 
trasted sorts  of  faith.  Spinoza,  I  am  going  to  show  you, 
had  one  of  these  interests  very  deeply,  the  other  hardly 
at  all. 

The  religious  interest  of  the  first  sort,  I  say,  seeks  a& 
authoritative  guide.  If  it  finds  one  in  some  conceived 
deity,  it  rejoices.  This  deity  is,  in  this  case,  above  all  a 
moral  one.  He  directs  me,  and  I  follow.  My  delight,  if 
I  am  devout,  is  then  in  the  "  law  of  the  Lord."  The 
law  may  be  a  ceremonial  one ;  then  I  build  altars,  offer 
sacrifices,  hold  solemn  feasts.  Or  again,  his  law  may  be  a 
law  of  righteousness  of  heart  and  life  ;  then,  commanded 
by  God,  sure  that  he  knows  the  right  way  and  has  shown 
it,  I  order  my  life  as  well  as  I  can  according  to  this 
righteousness.  I  become  just,  merciful,  charitable,  strenu- 
ous. I  don't  ask  so  much  who  the  Lord  is,  as  what  his 
will  is.  I  may  philosophize,  but  in  that  case  my  philoso- 
phy will  be  principally  a  moral  philosophy.  The  subtle- 
ties of  theology,  the  origin  of  evil,  the  nature  of  the 
divine  plan,  will  concern  me  little.  God  wants  me  to 
work  ;  he  asks  service  of  me,  not  comprehension.  As  for 
the  evils  of  life,  I  see  that  they  are  mostly  the  just  pun- 
ishment of  my  sins ;  I  endure  hardness  as  a  good  soldier. 
I  know  meanwhile  that  my  will  is  free,  that  I  can  serve 
the  law  of  God  if  I  want  to,  that  there  is  one  who  does 
not  serve  this  law,  to  wit,  the  devil,  and  that  I  must  fight 
this  devil  and  all  his  works  wherever  I  see  them.  My 
philosophy  consists  in  clear  thinking  about  my  duty ;  my 
faith  is  an  assurance  that  the  right  will  somehow  conquer ; 
my  love  is  for  all  who  desire  God's  kingdom  to  come ;  my 
hope  is  for  the  victory  that  is  near  at  hand,  and  for  the 


48  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

word,  "  Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servant ! "  Tho 
crown  of  life  is  beyond,  the  sword  is  in  hand,  the  Lord 
directs  the  fight,  and,  best  of  all,  he  needs  me  to  help 
him  against  the  mighty,  —  needs  me,  for  he  says  so.  In 
fact  his  saying  so  is  just  what  constitutes  his  law  and  my 
moral  comfort.  If  he  did  not  need  me,  my  life  would  be 
vain;  in  his  need  is  my  consolation.  The  world  thus 
viewed  is  so  simple,  so  directly  present  to  you,  so  majestic, 
so  inspiring !  Love  the  Lord,  love  all  his  friends,  and 
hate  Satan.  What  could  be  plainer  ?  Here,  you  see,  is 
the  fine  and  sinewy  religion  of  St.  Christopher.  The 
Lord  is  the  strongest,  fight  on  his  side.  He  grants  you 
a  place  in  his  service,  how  great  is  this  reward !  This 
love  of  him  and  of  his  servants,  how  perfect  and  plain  a 
doctrine ! 

"  Love-making,  how  simple  a  matter  !     No  depths  to  explore, 
No  heights  in  a  life  to  ascend  !     No  disheartening  before, 
No  affrighting  hereafter,  —  Love  now  will  be  love  evermore." 

And  true  love  will  be  the  fulfilling  of  the  law,  —  love 
of  the  good,  warfare  with  ill.  Here,  then,  says  the  active 
soul,  is  peace  at  length,  the  only  true  peace,  —  the  peace 
of  endless  service,  the  rest  of  a  glorious  activity,  the  joy  of 
life  amongst  the  sons  of  God.  After  this  fashion,  then, 
the  religion  of  duty  meets  the  first  of  the  two  interests 
which  I  have  been  distinguishing.  You  all  well  know 
what  religious  faiths  express  this  interest. 

Were  I  just  now  a  practical  teacher,  I  should  leave  you 
to  enjoy  the  thrill  of  this  sort  of  energetic  devotion,  and 
should  not  trouble  you  with  the  critical  observation  that 
there  is  quite  another  sort  of  religious  interest  in  the 
world,  which  is  not  only  very  different  from  the  foregoing, 
but  which  is,  in  the  first  place  and  naturally,  opposed 
thereto.  Yet  this  other  interest,  this  second  source  of 
religion,  does  exist  in  the  human  heart,  and  gives  birth 
to  some  of  the  deepest  forms  of  piety.  I  am  here,  not  as 
a  practical  teacher,  but  as  an  observer  of  life,  and  it  id 


THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.        49 

my  duty,  therefore,  to  call  your  attention  to  the  variety 
of  these  two  great  interests,  and  then  to  show  you  that 
Spinoza's  religious  interest,  profound,  saintly,  mystical  as 
it  was,  belongs  to  the  second  sort. 

Life  has  its  wounds  as  well  as  its  weapons.  Your 
moral  hero  occasionally  sees  not  only  the  discomfiture  of 
Satan,  but  also  the  warm  blood  of  his  own  mortal  veins 
oozing  forth  as  well.  Or  again,  he  finds  himself  an  out- 
cast, as  Spinoza  was,  who  knows  no  army  that  will  accept 
him,  and  who  hears  all  human  voices  call  him  traitor. 
And  then,  indeed,  he  knows  an  experience  that  even  the 
weaklings  may  aspire  to  share.  He  knows,  namely,  what 
it  is  to  feel  faint  and  sick  at  heart,  and  to  see  his  own 
worthlessness.  Then  it  occurs  to  him  that  perhaps  the 
divine  order,  if  haply  it  does  really  exist,  may  possibly 
need  just  his  right  arm  a  little  less  than  he  had  thought. 
The  idea  is  so  commonplace  a  suggestion,  after  all.  What 
more  natural  ?  thinks  the  injured  soul.  Here  I  am,  a 
mere  writhing  worm,  ein  triiber  Gust  auf  der  dunkelen 
Erde,  alone  in  infinite  space,  and  I  pretended  to  ask  for 
guidance  as  to  my  petty  conduct !  I  pretended  that  the 
divine  order  needed  just  me !  Why  did  I  pretend  this  ? 
Because  of  my  pride,  was  it  not  ?  I  called  this  sort  o£ 
thing  piety,  and  then  kindly  offered  my  services  to  God, 
on  the  ground  that  he  could  do  worse  than  to  accept  them, 
and  with  the  observation  that  the  rolls  of  his  army  were, 
before  my  accession,  note  worthily  incomplete.  This,  I 
called  religion  ;  and  now,  what  happens  ?  Fate  moves  on 
its  own  way ;  I  am  wounded,  cast  down,  weak,  worthless. 
All  his  billows  are  gone  over  me.  My  righteousness, 
what  worth  was  it  in  his  sight?  Shall  mortal  man  be 
just  before  God  ?  After  all,  if  there  is  a  moral  order,  is 
it  not  complete  unto  itself  ?  Did  God  wait  all  the  eter- 
nities until  I  was  ripened  before  He  should  triumph? 
Either  he  exists  not  at  all, —  and  then,  how  shall  I  create 
him  ?  —  or  he  exists,  and  then  from  eternity  to  eternity 


50  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

he  has  triumphed.  His  holiness  I  cannot  create.  Let  me, 
if  haply  I  may,  see  it,  worship  it,  enjoy  it  as  wondering, 
contemplative,  adoring,  helpless  onlooker,  consoled,  if  at 
all,  by  the  knowledge  that  though  I  fail  and  am  lost, 
he  is  from  everlasting  to  everlasting. 

I  do  not  fear  to  seem  unmindful  of  the  dignity  of  the 
genuine  religious  consciousness  when  I  thus  present  to 
you  the  curious  and,  in  fact,  paradoxical  opposition  be- 
tween its  two  typical  moods  and  their  interests.  The 
affair  is  ao  vital  and  familiar  an  experience  that  nobody 
can  have  failed  to  pass  through  this  change  of  mood  or 
to  come  close  upon  the  problem  involved  in  it.  For  our- 
selves, as  critics  of  life,  we  have  just  now  only  to  look 
on  while  this  second  form  of  the  religious  consciousness 
develops  itself  before  our  eyes  into  the  form  in  which 
it  becomes  immediately  characteristic  of  Spinoza.  The 
problem  involved  is,  as  a  general  philosophical  question, 
one  that  will  concern  us  much  later  on  in  our  course, 
when  I  shall  ask  how  we  are  really  to  solve,  if  at  all,  the 
paradoxical  opposition  between  the  active  and  the  submis- 
sive forms  of  piety.  For  the  time  being  I  shall  simply 
let  the  helpless  mood  of  the  defeated  soul  find  its  own 
form  of  religious  faith.  This  form  is  the  one  embodied 
in  many  kinds  of  what  is  called  mystical  religion.  For- 
give me  if  I  dwell  upon  it  a  little.  The  digression  will 
in  the  end  aid  us  to  comprehend  Spinoza. 

This  second  mood,  you  have  seen,  began  just  now  with 
a  somewhat  cynical  despair,  which  looked  at  first  sight 
rather  unheroic,  not  to  say  immoral.  Well,  relatively  un- 
moral this  form  of  the  religious  consciousness  remains  to 
the  end.  It  is  not  its  office  to  inspire  the  warriors  so  much 
as  to  comfort  the  downcast  and  to  succor  the  wounded. 
The  honors  and  consolations  of  a  noble  office  it  has  not  to 
offer  you.  It  finds  you  despairing,  and  it  teaches  you  to 
despise  even  your  despair,  and  to  rejoice  even  in  your  fail- 
ure. After  all,  look  about  you,  and  see  what  you  have 


THE  PERIODS   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY.  51 

learned.  Is  not  the  lesson  of  your  defeat  the  lesson  of 
the  universal  vanity  of  every  individual  undertaking  of 
man  ?  And  what  more  comforting  than  this  lesson,  if  only 
you  become  wise  enough  to  see  that  above  all  these  fail- 
ures of  ours  there  is  the  strong  and  divine  order  that 
never  strives  or  is  weary,  but  that  is  eternally  fresh  in  the 
youth  of  its  perfection?  If  you  can  but  once  see  that 
God  reigns,  you  will  also  see,  says  this  mood,  not  only 
that  mortals  must  fail,  but  that  they  deserve  to  fail,  so 
idle  is  their  trust  in  themselves,  so  sinful  is  their  pride, 
so  weak  is  everything  in  which  they  put  their  hope. 

If  you  want  further  illustration  of  this  mood,  you 
might,  if  you  choose,  take  up  that  permanently  charming 
record  of  experience,  the  old  and  thoroughly  orthodox 
devotional  book  called  "  Imitation  of  Christ,"  and  let  it 
put  into  words  this  new  feeling.  Spinoza,  very  probably, 
never  read  this  book,  but,  I  call  your  special  attention  to 
it,  we  shall  find  him  saying  much  the  same  thing,  nur  mit 
ein  Bischen  and&rn  Worten.  The  burden  of  the  "  Imita- 
tion "  is  the  old  story  of  human  defeat.  Who  could  say 
worse  things  of  life  than  these  ?  "  How  can  the  life  of 
man  be  loved,  seeing  that  it  hath  so  many  bitter  things, 
that  it  is  subjected  to  so  many  calamities  and  miseries  ? 
How  can  it  be  even  called  life  when  it  produces  so  many 
deaths  and  plagues ? "  "I  resolve  that  I  will  act  bravely, 
but  when  a  little  temptation  cometh,  immediately  I  am  in 
a  great  strait.  Wonderfully  small  sometimes  is  the  mat- 
ter whence  a  grievous  temptation  cometh,  and  whilst  I 
imagine  myself  safe  for  a  little  space,  when  I  am  not  con- 
sidering, I  find  myself  often  almost  overcome  by  a  little 
puff  of  wind."  "  Thou  shalt  lamentably  fall  away,  if  thou 
set  a  value  upon  any  worldly  thing."  "  To-day  thou  con- 
fest  thy  sins,  and  to-morrow  thou  committest  again  the 
sins  thou  didst  confess."  "  What  canst  thou  see  any- 
where which  can  continue  long  under  the  sun?  Thou 
believest,  perchance,  that  thou  shalt  be  satisfied,  but  thou 


62  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

wilt  never  be  able  to  attain  unto  this.  If  thou  shouldst 
see  all  things  before  thee  at  once,  what  would  it  be  but  a 
vain  vision  ?  "  "  Trust  not  thy  feeling,  for  that  which  is 
now  will  be  quickly  changed  into  somewhat  else."  In 
brief,  then,  to  sum  up  this  whole  pessimism  of  the  devout 
author  of  the  "  Imitation,"  we,  and  all  finite  things  about 
us,  are  utterly  vain,  and  so,  not  only  is  our  life  a  plague, 
but  it  ought  to  be  a  plague  ;  its  miseries,  its  sins,  its  fail- 
ures, are  not  only  inevitable,  but  they  are  somehow  justi- 
fied by  our  fatal  worthlessness.  Yet  consider  how  just  this 
pessimism  about  the  finite  is  used,  in  the  "  Imitation,"  to 
produce  and  to  sustain  that  exalted  rapture  in  the  contem- 
plation of  the  eternal  which  makes  the  "Imitation"  so 
curiously  consoling  a  book.  The  marvel  of  this  contrast 
between  the  utter  corruption  of  the  finite  and  the  glory  of 
God,  the  singular  effect  of  it  all  upon  the  reader,  is  one  of 
the  most  marvelous  psychological  puzzles  about  this  fasci- 
nating and,  I  may  even  add,  dangerous  work  of  genius. 
Herein  lies  the  wiliness  of  that  melancholy  and  yet  in- 
spiring old  work :  it  condemns  your  vanities  until  you 
are  fairly  ashamed  of  having  even  once  tried  to  be  ac- 
tively righteous  with  this  weak  will  and  this  worthless 
nature  of  yours.  The  sword  of  your  moral  heroism  turns 
to  rust,  and  your  whole  warlike  harness  fairly  rots  away 
into  nothingness  as  you  read.  Life  is  dust  and  ashes. 
Death,  yes,  annihilation,  would  be  a  relief  to  your  hope- 
)  less  self-condemnation.  And  yet,  above  all,  glittering  in 
the  icy  glories  of  its  eternal  frost,  rises  before  you  the 
sacred  mountain  of  God's  unapproachable  grandeur.  You 
look  upwards  to  that,  and  lo  !  like  a  shadow  every  trace 
of  your  misery  has  vanished.  "  When  a  man  cometh  to 
this,  that  he  seeketh  comfort  from  no  created  being,  then 
doth  he  perfectly  begin  to  enjoy  God ;  then  also  will  he 
be  well  contented  with  whatsoever  shall  happen  to  him. 
He  committeth  himself  altogether  and  with  full  trust  unto 
God,  who  is  all  in  all  to  him,  to  whom  nothing  perisheth 


THE   PERIODS   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY.  53 

or  dieth,  but  all  things  live  to  him  and  obey  his  word 
without  delay."  "  Let  therefore  nothing  which  thou  doest 
seem  to  thee  great ;  let  nothing  be  grand,  nothing  of  value 
or  beauty,  nothing  worthy  of  honor,  nothing  lofty,  no- 
thing praiseworthy  or  desirable,  save  what  is  eternal. 
Let  the  eternal  truth  please  thee  above  all  things;  let 
thine  own  great  vileness  displease  thee  continually." 
Thus,  then,  as  all  readers  of  the  "  Imitation  "  know,  the 
author,  turning  steadfastly  from  the  finite,  comes  at  last  to 
a  new  life  of  contemplative  freedom,  a  life  where  indeed 
positive  action,  service  of  the  Lord  with  a  sense  that  the 
Lord  needs  one,  has  small  place,  but  where  once  more 
something  called  love  inspires  afresh  the  heart.  This 
"  love  "  of  the  "  Imitation  "  is  no  longer  the  nai've,  child- 
like, warmly  vital  love  of  the  optimistic  warrior  who  in 
this  world  cheerfully  serves  God,  like  a  St.  Christopher, 
because  God  is  the  strongest.  This  new  sort  of  love  is  a 
mystical  adoration.  It  produces  acts,  but  they  are  done 
in  a  dream -like  sort  of  somnambulistic  ecstasy ;  they  are 
the  acts  of  one  hypnotized,  so  to  speak,  by  a  long  look 
heavenwards.  Strength  this  love  has,  but  it  is  the 
strength  of  gazing ;  movement  it  has,  but  it  is  an  anaes- 
thetic, unconscious  sort  of  movement.  "  Love  feeleth  no 
burden,  reckoneth  not  labors."  This  anaesthesia  is  not 
the  willing  work  of  the  faithful  servant  so  much  as  an 
incident  of  the  rapturous  wandering  of  one  lost  in  God. 
"  Nothing  is  sweeter  than  love,  nothing  stronger,  nothing 
loftier,  nothing  broader,  nothing  pleasanter,  nothing  fuller 
or  better  in  heaven  or  earth ;  for  love  was  born  of  God 
and  cannot  rest  save  in  God,  above  all  created  things. 
He  who  loveth,  flyeth,  runneth,  and  is  glad  ;  he  is  free 
and  not  hindered  ;  he  giveth  all  things  for  all  things,  and 
hath  all  things  in  all  things,  because  he  resteth  in  One 
who  is  high  above  all,  from  whom  every  good  floweth 
and  proceedeth.  He  looketh  not  for  gifts,  but  turneth 
himself  to  the  Giver  above  all  good  things.  .  .  .  Love  is 


64  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

watchful,  and  whilst  sleeping  still  keeps  watch;  though 
fatigued  it  is  not  weary,  though  pressed  it  is  not  forced, 
though  alarmed  it  is  not  terrified  ;  but  like  the  living 
flame  and  the  burning  torch,  it  breaketh  forth  oil  high, 
and  securely  triuinpheth.  If  a  man  loveth,  he  knoweth 
what  this  voice  crieth.  For  the  ardent  affection  of  the 
soul  is  a  great  clamor  in  the  ears  of  God,  and  it  saith,  My 
God,  my  Beloved!  Thou  art  all  mine,  and  I  am  all 

thine." 

v. 

I  have  dwelt  upon  the  expressions  of  this  kind  of  reli- 
gious interest  as  we  find  them  in  such  orthodox  books  as 
the  "  Imitation,"  because  I  want  to  remind  you  of  the 
peculiarities  of  the  well-known  mood  of  the  mystics,  in 
order  to  make  the  attitude  of  Spinoza,  the  heretic,  more 
easily  comprehensible.  Spinoza's  religious  concern,  I 
insist,  is  of  this  latter  sort.  He  is  n't  a  man  of  action  ; 
his  heroism,  such  as  it  is,  is  the  heroism  of  contemplation. 
He  is  not  always,  let  me  tell  you,  in  his  religious  mood ; 
and  when  he  is  not,  he  appears  as  a  cynical  observer  of 
the  vanity  of  mortal  passions.  But  as  religious  thinker, 
he  is  no  cynic.  Unswervingly  he  turns  from  the  world  of 
finite  hopes  and  joys  ;  patiently  he  renounces  every  sort 
of  worldly  comfort ;  even  the  virtue  that  he  seeks  is  not 
the  virtue  of  the  active  man.  There  is  one  good  thing, 
and  that  is  the  Infinite  ;  there  is  one  wisdom,  and  that  is 
to  know  God ;  there  is  one  sort  of  true  love,  and  that  is 
the  submissive  love  of  the  saintly  onlooker,  who  in  the 
solitude  of  reflection  sees  everywhere  an  all-pervading 
law,  an  all-conquering  truth,  a  supreme  and  irresistible 
perfection.  Sin  is  merely  foolishness ;  insight  is  the  only 
virtue  ;  evil  is  nothing  positive,  but  merely  the  depriva- 
tion of  good ;  there  is  nothing  to  lament  in  human  affairs, 
except  the  foolishness  itself  of  every  lamentation.  The 
wise  man  transcends  lamentation,  ceases  to  love  finite 
things,  ceases  therefore  to  long  and  to  be  weary,  ceases 


THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.        55 

to  strive  and  to  grow  faint,  offers  no  foolish  service  to 
God  as  a  gift  of  his  own,  but  possesses  his  own  soul  in 
knowing  God,  and  therefore  enters  into  the  divine  free- 
dom, by  reason  of  a  clear  vision  of  the  supreme  and  neces-, 
sary  laws  of  the  eternal  world. 

This,  then,  is  the  essence  of  Spinoza's  religion.  He 
begins  his  essay  on  the  "  Improvement  of  the  Understand- 
ing "  with  words  that  we  now  are  prepared  to  comprehend. 
This  essay  and  the  fifth  part  of  the  ethics  show  us  Spi- 
noza's religious  attitude  and  experience,  elsewhere  much 
veiled  in  his  works.  "  After  experience  had  taught  me," 
says  the  essay,  "  that  all  the  usual  surroundings  of  social 
life  are  vain  and  futile,  seeing  that  none  of  the  objects  of 
iny  fears  contained  in  themselves  anything  either  good  or 
bad,  except  in  so  far  as  the  mind  is  affected  by  them,  I 
finally  resolved  to  inquire  whether  there  might  be  some 
real  good  which  would  affect  the  mind  singly,  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  else,  whether  there  might  be  anything  of 
which  the  discovery  and  attainment  would  enable  me  to 
enjoy  continuous,  supreme,  and  unending  happiness." 
Here  is  the  starting-point.  Life  for  Spinoza  is  in  the 
ordinary  world  a  vain  life,  because,  for  the  first,  it  is  our 
thinking  that  makes  the  things  about  us  good  or  bad  to 
us,  and  not  any  real  value  of  the  things  themselves,  whilst 
the  transiency,  the  uncertainty  of  these  finite  things 
brings  it  about  that,  if  we  put  our  trust  in  them,  they  will 
erelong  disappoint  us.  Rapidly,  from  this  beginning, 
Spinoza  rehearses  the  familiar  tale  of  the  emptiness  of  the 
life  of  sense  and  worldliness,  the  same  tale  that  all  the 
mystics  repeat.  The  reader,  who  has  never  felt  this 
experience  of  Spinoza  and  of  the  other  mystics,  always 
feels  indeed  as  if  such  seeming  pessimism  must  be  largely 
mere  sour-heartedness,  or  else  as  if  the  expression  of  it 
must  be  pure  cant.  But  after  all,  in  the  world  of  spirit- 
ual experiences,  this,  too,  is  a  valuable  one  to  pass  through 
nnd  to  record.  Whoever  has  not  sometime  fully  felt  what 


56  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

it  is  to  have  his  whole  world  of  finite  ambitions  and  affeo. 
tions  through  and  through  poisoned,  will  indeed  not  easily 
comprehend  the  gentle  disdain  with  which  Spinoza,  in  this 
essay,  lightly  brushes  aside  pleasure,  wealth,  fame,  as 
equally  and  utterly  worthless.  We  know,  indeed,  little  of 
Spinoza's  private  life,  but  if  we  should  judge  from  his 
words  we  should  say  that  as  exile  he  has  felt  just  this  bit- 
terness, and  has  conquered  it,  so  that  when  he  talks  of 
vanity  he  knows  whereof  he  speaks.  People  who  have 
never  walked  in  the  gloomy  outlying  wastes  of  spiritual 
darkness  have  never  had  the  chance  to  find  just  the  sort 
of  divine  light  which  he  finally  discovered  there.  These 
mystics,  too,  have  their  wealth  of  experience ;  don't 
doubt  their  sincerity  because  they  tell  a  strange  tale. 
Don't  doubt  it  even  if,  like  Spinoza,  they  join  with  their 
mysticism  other  traits  of  the  wonderful  Jewish  character, 
—  shrewd  cynicism,  for  instance.  When  they  call  plea- 
sure and  wealth  and  fame  all  dust  and  ashes,  they  possibly 
know  whereof  they  speak,  at  least  as  far  as  concerns  them- 
selves alone.  Spinoza,  at  any  rate,  twice  in  his  life,  re- 
fused, if  his  biographers  are  right,  the  offered  chance  to 
attain  a  competency.  He  declined  these  chances  because, 
once  for  all,  worldly  means  would  prove  an  entanglement 
to  him.  He  preferred  his  handicraft,  and  earned  his  liv- 
ing by  polishing  lenses.  Steadfastly,  moreover,  as  we 
know,  he  refused  opportunities  to  get  a  popular  fame,  and 
even  to  make  a  worthily  great  name.  The  chief  instance 
is  his  refusal  of  the  professorship  which  the  Elector  Pala- 
tine offered  him  in  1673  at  Heidelberg,  under  promise  of 
complete  freedom  of  teaching,  and  with  the  obvious  chance 
of  an  European  reputation.  So  Spinoza  did  not  merely 
call  the  finite  world  names,  as  many  do;  he  meant  his 
word,  and  he  kept  it.  He  was  no  sentimentalist,  no  emo- 
tional mystic.  He  was  cool-headed,  a  lover  of  formulas 
and  of  mathematics ;  but  still  he  was  none  the  less  a  true 
mystic. 


THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.       5T 

Well,  he  finds  the  finite  vain,  because  you  have  to  pur- 
sue  it,  and  then  it  deceives  you,  corrupts  you,  degrades 
you,  and  in  the  end  fails  you,  being  but  a  fleeting  shadow 
after  all.  "  I  thus  perceived,"  he  says,  "  that  I  was  in  a 
state  of  great  peril,  and  I  compelled  myself  to  seek  with 
all  my  strength  for  a  remedy,  however  uncertain  it  might 
be,  as  a  sick  man  struggling  with  a  deadly  disease,  when 
he  sees  that  death  will  surely  be  upon  him  unless  a  remedy 
be  found,  is  compelled  to  seek  such  a  remedy  with  all  his 
strength,  inasmuch  as  his  whole  hope  lies  therein.  All 
the  objects  pursued  by  the  multitude  not  only  bring  no 
remedy  that  tends  to  preserve  our  being,  but  even  act  as 
hindrances,  causing  the  death  not  seldom  of  those  who 
possess  them,  and  always  of  those  who  are  possessed  by 
them."  "  All  these  evils,"  he  continues,  "  seem  to  have 
arisen  from  the  fact  that  our  happiness  or  unhappiness 
has  been  made  the  mere  creature  of  the  thing  that  we  { 
happen  to  be  loving.  When  a  thing  is  not  loved,  no  strife 
arises  about  it ;  there  is  no  pang  if  it  perishes,  no  envy  if 
another  bears  it  away,  no  fear,  no  hate ;  yes,  in  a  word, 
nc  tumult  of  soul.  These  things  all  come  from  loving 
that  which  perishes,  such  as  the  objects  of  which  I  have 
spoken.  But  love  towards  a  thing  eternal  feasts  the  mind 
with  joy  alone,  nor  hath  sadness  any  part  therein.  Hence 
this  is  to  be  prized  above  all,  and  to  be  sought  for  with 
all  our  might.  I  have  used  the  words  not  at  random,  — 
*  If  only  I  could  be  thorough  in  my  seeking ; '  for  I  found 
that  though  I  already  saw  all  this  in  mind,  I  could  not 
yet  lay  aside  avarice  and  pleasure  and  ambition.  Yet  one 
thing  I  found,  that  as  long  as  I  was  revolving  these 
thoughts,  so  long  those  desires  were  always  behind  my 
back,  whilst  I  strenuously  sought  the  new  light ;  and 
herein  I  found  great  comfort,  for  I  saw  that  my  disease 
was  not  beyond  hope  of  physic.  And  although  at  first 
such  times  were  rare,  and  endured  but  for  a  little  space, 
yet  as  more  and  more  the  true  good  lighted  up  my  miiul, 
such  times  came  quicker  and  endured  longer." 


58  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

VI. 

This,  then,  the  beginning  of  Spinoza's  Pilgrim's  Pro- 
gress. But  now  for  what  distinguishes  him  from  other 
mystics,  and  makes  him  a  philosopher,  not  a  mere  ex- 
horter.  He  has  his  religious  passion,  he  must  reflect  upon 
it.  The  passion  any  one  might  have  who  had  passed 
through  the  dark  experience  of  which  we  spoke  a  moment 
since.  The  philosopher  must  justify  his  faith.  And  how 
hard  to  justify  such  a  faith  it  would  seem  in  this  cold  and 
severe  seventeenth  century.  It  was  an  age,  you  remem- 
ber, when  everything  held  to  be  at  all  occult  was  banished 
from  the  thoughts  of  the  wise,  and  when  clear  thinking 
alone  was  believed  in,  when  man,  too,  was  held  to  be  a 
mechanism,  a  curiously  complicated  natural  machine,  when 
Hobbes,  greatest  amongst  the  English  speculative  think- 
ers of  the  age  —  a  writer  much  read  by  Spinoza  —  could 
declare  that  the  word  "  spirit "  was  a  meaningless  sound, 
and  that  nothing  exists  but  bodies  and  movements.  How 
defend  a  mystical  religious  faith  at  such  a  moment? 
Spinoza's  defense  is  so  ingenious,  so  profound,  so  simple, 
as  to  give  us  one  of  the  most  noteworthy  and  dramatic 
systems  ever  constructed.  Once  more  I  assure  you  that  I 
here  expound  only  one  aspect  of  his  thought.  I  ignore  his 
peculiar  methods ;  I  ignore  his  technicalities ;  I  give  you 
but  the  kernel  of  his  doctrine  concerning  religious  truth. 

Technicalities  aside,  this  doctrine  is  essentially  founded 
upon  what  Spinoza  regards  as  the  axiom  that  everything 
in  the  world  must  be  either  explained  by  its  own  nature, 
or  by  some  higher  nature.1  You  explain  a  thing  when 
you  comprehend  why  it  must  be  what  it  is.  Thus,  for 
instance,  in  geometry  you  know  that  all  the  diameters  of 
any  one  circle  must  be  precisely  equal,  and  you  know  that 
this  is  so,  because  you  see  why  it  must  be  so.2  The  diam- 

1  See  Eth.  I.  Axioms  i.  and  ii. 

2  See  examples  in  the  Tractat.  de  Emendat.  Int.  under  t>p  ,Vead  o! 
rules  for  definition. 


THE   PERIODS   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  59 

eters  are  all  drawn  in  the  circle  and  through  the  centre  of 
it,  and  the  circle  has  a  certain  nature,  a  structure,  a  make, 
a  build,  whereby,  for  instance,  you  distinguish  it  from  an 
oval  or  a  square.  This  build,  this  make  of  the  circle,  it  is 
that  forces  the  diameters  to  be  equal.  They  can't  help 
being  equal,  being  drawn  through  the  centre  of  a  curve 
which  has  no  elongation,  no  bulge  outwards  in  one  direc- 
tion more  than  another,  but  which  is  evenly  curved  all 
around.  The  nature  of  the  circle,  then,  at  once  forces  the 
diameters  to  be  equal,  —  pins  them  down  to  equality, 
hems  in  any  rebellious  diameter  that  should  try  to  stretch 
out  farther  than  the  others,  —  and  also  explains  to  the 
reason  of  a  geometer  just  why  this  result  follows.  My 
example  is  extremely  dry  and  simple,  but  it  will  serve  to 
show  what  Spinoza  is  thinking  of.  He  says  now,  as  some- 
thing self-evident,  that  anything  in  the  world  which 
does  n't  directly  contain  its  own  explanation  must  be  a 
part  of  some  larger  nature  of  things  which  does  explain 
it,  and  which,  accordingly,  forces  it  to  be  just  what  it  is. 
For  instance,  to  use  my  own  illustration,  if  two  mountains 
had  precisely  the  same  height,  as  the  diameters  of  a  cir- 
cle Jiave  precisely  the  same  length,  we  should  surely  have 
to  suppose  something  in  the  nature  of  the  physical  uni- 
verse which  forced  just  these  two  mountains  to  have  the 
same  height.  But,  even  so,  as  things  actually  are,  we 
must  suppose  that  whatever  is  or  happens,  in  case  it  is 
not  a  self-evident  and  necessary  thing,  must  have  its 
explanation  in  some  higher  and  larger  nature  of  things. 
Thus,  once  more,  you  yourself  are  either  what  you  are  by 
virtue  of  your  own  self-evident  and  self-made  nature,  or 
else,  as  is  the  view  of  Spinoza,  you  are  forced  to  be  what 
you  are  by  the  causes  that  have  produced  you,  and  that 
have  brought  you  here.  Cause  and  explanation  mean 
for  Spinoza  the  same  thing.  He  knows  only  rigidly  math- 
ematical necessity.  Yet  more,  not  only  you,  but  every 
act,  every  thought  of  yours,  each  quiver  of  your  eyelashes, 


60  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

each  least  shadow  of  feeling  in  your  mind,  must  be  just  as 
much  a  result  of  the  nature  of  things  as  your  existence 
itself.  Nothing  comes  by  chance ;  everything  must  be 
what  it  is.  Could  you  see  the  world  at  one  glance,  "  under 
the  form  of  eternity,"  you  would  see  everything  as  a 
necessary  result  of  the  whole  nature  of  things.  It  would 
be  as  plain  to  you  that  you  must  now  have  this  quiver  of 
eyelash  or  this  shade  of  feeling ;  it  would  be  also  as  plain 
to  you  why  you  must  have  these  seemingly  accidental  ex- 
periences, as  it  is  plain  to  the  geometer  why  the  evenly 
curved  circle  must  forbid  its  diameters  to  be  unequal.  It 
is  of  the  nature  of  reason  to  view  things  as  necessary,  as 
explicable,  as  results  either  of  their  own  nature,  or,  if 
this  isn't  the  case,  then  of  the  higher  nature  of  things 
whereof  they  form  a  part. 

From  this  axiom,  Spinoza  proceeds,  by  a  very  short  but 
thorny  road,  to  the  thought  that,  if  this  is  so,  there  must 
be  some  one  highest  nature  of  things,  which  explains  all 
reality.  That  such  highest  nature  exists,  he  regards  as 
self-evident.  The  self-explaining  must,  of  course,  explain, 
and  so  make  sure,  its  own  existence.  Spinoza  shows  by 
devices  which  I  cannot  here  follow  that  there  couldn't 
be  numerous  self  -  explained  and  separate  natures  of 
things.1  The  world  is  one,  and  so  all  the  things  in  it 
must  be  parts  of  one  self-evident,  self-producing  order, 
one  nature.  Spinoza  conceives  this  order,  describes  its 
self-explaining  and  all-producing  character,  as  well  as  he 
can,  and  then  gives  it  a  name  elsewhere  well  known  to 
philosophers,  but  used  by  him  in  his  own  sense.  He  calls 
the  supreme  nature  of  things  the  universal  "  Substance  " 
of  all  the  world.  In  it  are  we  all ;  it  makes  us  what  we 
are  ;  it  does  what  its  own  nature  determines  ;  it  explains 
itself  and  all  of  us;  it  isn't  produced,  it  produces;  it 
is  uncreate,  supreme,  overruling,  omnipresent,  absolute, 

1  Eth.  I.  prop.  v.  ;  prop.  viii.  schol.  ii.  ;  props.  xS.  and  xiv. ;  Epitt. 
Xxxiv.  (Hague  edition). 


THE  PERIODS   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY.  61 

rational,  irreversible,  unchangeable,  the  law  of  laws,  the 
nature  of  natures  ;  and  we  —  we,  with  all  our  acts, 
thoughts,  feelings,  life,  relations,  experiences  —  are  just 
the  result  of  it,  the  consequences  of  it,  as  the  diameters 
are  results  of  the  nature  of  a  circle.  Feel,  hope,  desire, 
choose,  strive,  as  you  will,  all  is  in  you  because  this  uni- 
versal "  substance  "  makes  you  what  you  are,  forces  you 
into  this  place  in  the  nature  of  things,  rules  you  as  the 
higher  truth  rules  the  lower,  as  the  wheel  rules  the  spoke, 
as  the  storm  rules  the  raindrop,  as  the  tide  rules  the 
wavelet,  as  autumn  rules  the  dead  leaves,  as  the  snow- 
drift rules  the  fallen  snowflake ;  and  this  substance  is 
what  Spinoza  calls  God. 

If  you  ask  what  sort  of  thing  this  substance  is,  the 
first  answer  is,  it  is  something  eternal ;  and  that  means, 
not  that  it  lasts  a  good  while,  but  that  no  possible  tem- 
poral view  of  it  could  exhaust  its  nature.1  All  things 
that  happen  result  from  the  one  substance.  This  surely 
means  that  what  happens  now  and  what  happened  mil- 
lions of  years  ago  are,  for  the  substance,  equally  present 
and  necessary  results.  To  illustrate  once  more  in  my  own 
way :  A  spider  creeping  back  and  forth  across  a  circle 
could,  if  she  were  geometrically  disposed,  measure  out  in 
temporal  succession  first  this  diameter  and  then  that. 
Crawling  first  over  one  diameter,  she  would  say,  "  I  now 
find  this  so  long."  Afterwards  examining  another  diame- 
ter, she  would  say,  "  It  has  now  happened  that  what  I 
have  just  measured  proves  to  be  precisely  as  long  as  what 
I  measured  some  time  since,  and  no  longer."  The  toil  of 
such  a  spider  might  last  many  hours,  and  be  full  of  such 
successive  measurements,  each  marked  by  a  spun  thread 
of  web.  But  the  true  circle  itself  within  which  the  web 
was  spun,  the  circle  in  actual  space  as  the  geometer  knows 
it,  would  its  nature  be  thus  a  mere  series  of  events,  a 
mere  succession  of  spun  threads?2  No,  the  true  circle 

J  Eth.  I.  def.  viii.  and  Explicatio. 

*  Thi»  illustration  will  easily  be  recognized  as  an  effort  at  a  para* 


62  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

would  be  timeless,  a  truth  founded  in  the  nature  of  space, 
outlasting,  preceding,  determining  all  the  weary  web-spin- 
ning of  this  time-worn  spider.  Even  so  we,  spinning  our 
web  of  experience  in  all  its  dreary  complication  in  the 
midst  of  the  eternal  nature  of  the  world-embracing  sub- 
stance, imagine  that  our  lives  somehow  contain  true  nov- 
elty, discover  for  the  substance  what  it  never  knew  before, 
invent  new  forms  of  being.  We  fancy  our  past  wholly 
past,  and  our  future  wholly  unmade.  We  think  that 
where  we  have  as  yet  spun  no  web  there  is  nothing,  and 
that  what  we  long  ago  spun  has  vanished,  broken  by  the 
winds  of  time,  into  nothingness.  It  is  not  so.  For  the 
eternal  substance  there  is  no  before  and  after ;  all  truth  is 
truth.  "  Far  and  forgot  to  me  is  near,"  it  says.  In  the 
unvarying  precision  of  its  mathematical  universe,  all  is 
eternally  written. 

"  Not  all  year  piety  nor  wit 
Can  lure  it  back  to  cancel  half  a  line, 
Nor  all  your  tears  wash  out  one  word  of  it." 

What  will  be  for  endless  ages,  what  has  been  since  time 
began,  is  in  the  one  substance  completely  present,  as  in 
one  scroll  may  be  written  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  many 
lives,  as  one  earth  contains  the  dead  of  countless  genera- 
tions, as  one  space  enfolds  all  the  limitless  wealth  of 
figured  curves  and  of  bodily  forms. 

This  substance,  then,  this  eternal,  is  Spinoza's  God.  Ir> 
describing  it  I  have  used  terms,  comparisons,  and  illustra- 
tions largely  my  own.  I  hope  that  I  have  been  true  to 
the  spirit  of  Spinoza's  thought.  Remember,  then,  of  the 
substance  that  it  is  absolutely  infinite  and  self-deter- 
mined; that  it  exists  completely  and  once  for  all;  that 
all  the  events  of  the  world  follow  from  it  as  the  nature 

phrase  of  Eih.  II.  prop.  viii.  coroll.  and  schol.,  a  passage  where,  as 
in  the  illustration  above  used,  one  finds  presented,  but  not  solved,  the 
whole  problem  of  the  true  relation  of  finite  and  infinite,  temporal 
and  eternal. 


THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.        63 

of  the  diameter  follows  from  the  nature  of  the  circle,  and 
that  as  for  yourself,  it  enfolds,  overpowers,  determines, 
produces  both  you  and  your  destiny,  as  the  storm  em- 
braces the  raindrop,  and  as  the  nature  of  a  number  deter- 
mines the  value  of  its  factors.  Yet  now  you  will  ask  one 
question  more.  This  substance,  so  awful  in  its  fatal  per- 
fection, is  it,  you  will  say,  something  living  and  intelligent 
that  I  can  revere,  or  is  it  something  dead,  a  mere  blind 
force  ?  Spinoza  answers  this  question  in  a  very  original 
way.  The  substance,  he  says,  must  have  infinitely  numer- 
ous ways  of  expressing  itself,  each  complete,  rounded, 
self-determined.  It  is  like  an  infinite  sacred  scripture, 
translated  into  endlessly  numerous  tongues,  but  complete 
in  each  tongue.  Of  these  self-expressions  of  the  sub- 
stance, we  mortals  know  only  two.  One  is  the  material 
world,  —  Spinoza  calls  it  body  or  bodily  substance.  The 
other  is  the  inner  world  of  thought,  —  Spinoza  calls  it 
thinking  substance,  or  mind.  These  two  worlds,  Spinoza 
holds,  are  equally  real,  equally  revelations  of  the  one 
absolute  truth,  equally  divine,  equally  full  of  God,  equally 
expressions  of  the  supreme  order.  But,  for  the  rest,  they 
are,  as  they  exist  here  about  us,  mutually  independent. 
The  substance  expresses  itself  in  matter ;  very  well,  then, 
all  material  nature  is  full  of  rigid  and  mathematical  law  : 
body  moves  body ;  line  determines  line  in  space ;  every- 
thing, including  this  bodily  frame  of  ours,  is  an  expres- 
sion of  the  extended  or  corporeal  aspect  or  attribute  of 
the  substance.  In  stars  and  in  clouds,  in  dust  and  in 
animals,  in  figures  and  in  their  geometrical  properties, 
the  eternal  writes  its  nature,  as  in  a  vast  hieroglyphic. 
Equally,  however,  the  substance  writes  itself  in  the  events 
and  the  laws  of  mental  life.  And  that  it  does  so,  the 
very  existence  of  our  own  minds  proves.  Thought  pro- 
duces thought,  just  as  body  moves  body,  while  on  the 
other  hand  it  is  inconceivable  that  mind  should  act  on 
body,  or  body  explain  mind.  And  so  these  two  orders, 


64  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

mental  and  corporeal,  are  precisely  parallel.  For  neither 
belongs  to,  or  is  part  of,  or  is  explained  by,  the  other. 
Both,  then,  must  be  equally  and  independently  expres- 
sions of  God  the  substance.  Hence,  as  each  of  the  two 
orders  expresses  God's  nature,  each  must  be  as  omnipres- 
ent as  the  other.  Wherever  there  is  a  body,  God,  says 
Spinoza,  has  a  thought  corresponding  to  that  body.  All 
nature  is  full  of  thought.  Nothing  exists  but  has  its  own 
mind,  just  as  you  have  your  mind.  The  more  perfect 
body  has,  indeed,  the  more  perfect  mind  ;  a  crowbar  is  n't 
as  thoughtful  as  a  man,  because  in  the  simplicity  of  its 
metallic  hardness  it  finds  less  food  for  thought.1  But,  all 
the  same,  the  meanest  of  God's  creatures  has  some  sort 
of  thought  attached  to  it,  not  indeed  produced  or  affected 
in  any  wise  by  the  corporeal  nature  of  this  thing,  but 
simply  parallel  thereto;  an  expression,  in  cogitative  or 
sentient  terms,  of  the  nature  of  the  facts  here  present. 
Well,  this  thought  is  just  as  real  an  expression  of  the 
divine  nature  as  is  matter.  There  is  just  as  much  neces- 
sity, connection,  completeness,  mutual  interdependence, 
rationality,  eternity,  in  mind  as  in  body.  Of  God's  thought 
your  thought  is  a  part,  just  as  your  body  is  a  part  of  the 
embodied  substance.  His  thinking  nature  produces  your 
ideas,  as  his  corporeal  nature  produces  your  nerves. 
There  is,  however,  no  real  influence  of  body  over  mind, 
or  the  reverse.  The  two  are  just  parallel.  The  order 
and  connection  of  ideas  is  the  same  as  the  order  and  con- 
nection of  things.  Just  so  far  as  your  bodily  life  extends, 
so  far  and  no  further,  in  the  mental  world,  extends  your 
thought.  You  make  nothing  by  your  thinking  but  your 
own  thoughts ;  but  as  your  body  is  a  part  of  nature,  so 
also  is  your  mind  a  part  of  the  infinite  mind.  "  I  declare," 
says  Spinoza,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  "I  declare  the  human 
mind  to  be  a  part  of  nature,  namely,  because  I  hold  that 

1  The   illustration  is  my  own.     The   thought  is   that  of  Eth.  II. 
prop.  xiii.  and  the  scholium  thereto. 


THE   PERIODS  OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY.  65 

in  nature  there  exists  an  infinite  power  of  thinking,  which 
power,  so  far  as  it  is  infinite,  contains  ideally  the  whole 
of  nature,  in  such  wise  that  its  thoughts  proceed  in  the 
same  fashion  as  nature  herself,  being,  in  fact,  the  ideal 
mirror  thereof.1  Hence  follows  that  I  hold  the  human 
mind  to  be  simply  this  same  power  (of  divine  thought), 
not  so  far  as  it  is  infinite  and  perceives  the  whole  of 
nature,  but  as  far  as  it  perceives  alone  the  human  body ; 
and  thus  I  hold  our  human  mind  to  be  part  of  this  infi- 
nite intellect." 

VII. 

I  have  thus  led  you  a  tedious  way  through  this  thorny 
path  of  Spinoza's  thought.  I  have  had  no  hope  to  make 
their  connections  all  clear  ;  I  shall  be  content  if  you  bear 
in  mind  this  as  the  outcome :  our  reason  perceives  the 
world  to  be  one  being,  whose  law  is  everywhere  and  eter- 
nally expressed.  Only  this  eternal  point  of  view  shows 
us  the  truth.  But  if  we  are  rational,  we  can  assume  such 
an  eternal  point  of  view,  can  see  God  everywhere,  and  can 
so  enter,  not  merely  with  mystical  longings,  but  with  a 
clear  insight  into  an  immediate  communion  with  the  Lord 
of  all  being.  And  this  Lord,  he  is  indeed  the  author  of 
matter.  The  earth,  the  sea,  yes,  the  very  geometrical 
figures  themselves  write  his  truth  in  inanimate  outward 
forms.  But  meanwhile  (and  herein  lies  the  hope  of  our 
mystical  religion)  this  substance,  this  deity,  possesses  and 
of  its  nature  determines  also  and  equally  an  infinite  min  -  , 

of  whose  supreme   perfection  our  minds  are  fragments.  /T<"*rt>W  "° 
We  are  thus  not  only  the  sons  of  God  ;  so  far  as  we  are 
wise  our  lives  are  hid  in  God,  we  are  in  Him,  of  Him ; 

, 

we  recognize   this   indwelling,  we  lose  our  finiteness  in     v>*\v* •& 
Him,  we  become  filled  with  the  peace  which  the  eternal 
brings ;  we  calm  the  thirst  of  our  helpless  finite  passion 
by  entering   consciously  into  his  eternal   self-possession 

1  Nimirum  ej'us  ideatum,  the  corrected  reading  of  the  Hague  edi« 
tion  of  Vim  Vloteu  and  Laud.  See  Epist.  xxxii.  p.  130. 


66  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

and  freedom.  For  the  true  mind,  like  the  true  natural 
order,  knows  nothing  of  the  bondage  of  time,  thinks  of 
no  before  and  after,  has  no  fortune,  dreads  nothing,  la- 
ments nothing ;  but  enjoys  its  own  endlessness,  its  own 
completeness,  has  all  things  in  all  things,  and  so  cries,  like 
the  lover  of  the  "  Imitation,"  "My  Beloved,  I  am  all  thine, 
and  thou  art  all  mine." 

In  the  fifth  part  of  Spinoza's  "  Ethics,"  his  own  descrip- 
tion of  the  wise  man's  love  of  God  closes  his  wonderful 
exposition.  This  love  is  superior  to  fortune,  renounces 
all  hopes  and  escapes  all  fears,  feeds  alone  on  the  thought 
that  God's  mind  is  the  only  mind,  loves  God  with  a  frag- 
ment of  "  that  very  love  wherewith  God  loves  himself." 
The  wise  man  thus  wanders  on  earth  in  whatever  state 
you  will,  —  poor,  an  outcast,  weak,  near  to  bodily  death ; 
but  "  his  meditation  is  not  of  death,  but  of  life ; "  of  the 
eternal  life  whereof  he  is  a  part,  and  has  ever  been  and 
ever  will  be  a  part.  You  may  bound  him  in  a  nut-shell, 
but  he  counts  himself  king  of  infinite  space ;  and  rightly, 
for  the  bad  dreams  of  this  phantom  life  have  ceased  to 
trouble  him.  "  His  blessedness,"  says  Spinoza,  "  is  not 
the  reward  of  his  virtue,  but  his  virtue  itself.  He  re- 
joices therein,  not  because  he  has  controlled  his  lusts  ;  con- 
trariwise, because  he  rejoices  therein,  the  lusts  of  the  finite 
have  no  power  over  him."  "Thus  appears  how  potent, 
then,  is  the  wise  man,  and  how  much  he  surpasses  the  igno- 
rant man,  who  is  driven  only  by  his  lusts.  For  the  igno- 
rant man  is  not  only  distracted  in  various  ways  by  exter- 
nal causes,  without  ever  gaining  true  acquiescence  of 
mind,  but  moreover  lives,  as  it  were,  unwitting  of  him- 
self and  of  God  and  of  things,  and,  as  soon  as  he  ceases 
to  suffer,  ceases  also  to  be.  Whereas  the  wise  man,  in  so 
far  as  he  is  regarded  as  such,  is  scarcely  at  all  disturbed 
in  spirit,  but  being  conscious  of  himself  and  of  God  and 
of  things,  by  a  certain  eternal  necessity,  never  ceases  to 
be,  but  always  possesses  true  acquiescence  of  his  spirit. 


THE  PERIODS  OP  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.        67 

K  the  way  which  I  have  pointed  out  as  leading  to  this 
result  seems  exceedingly  hard,  it  may,  nevertheless,  be 
discovered.  Needs  must  it  be  hard  since  it  is  so  seldom 
found.  How  would  it  be  possible  if  salvation  were  ready 
to  our  hand,  and  could  without  great  labor  be  found,  that 
it  should  be  by  almost  all  men  neglected  ?  But  all  things 
excellent  are  as  difficult  as  they  are  rare." 

With  these  words  closes  the  book  of  Spinoza's  expe- 
rience. 


LECTURE  in. 

THE  REDISCOVERY  OF  THE    INNER  LIFE:   FROM  SPINOZA 
TO  KANT. 

IN  the  lecture  of  to-day,  as  I  must  frankly  assure  you 
at  the  outset,  our  path  lies  for  the  most  part  in  far  less 
inspiring  regions  than  those  into  which,  at  the  last  time, 
Spinoza  guided  us.  You  are  well  acquainted  with  a  fact 
of  life  to  which  I  may  as  well  call  your  attention  forthwith, 
the  fact,  namely,  that  certain  stages  of  growing  intelligence, 
and  even  of  growing  spiritual  knowledge,  are  marked  by 
an  inevitable,  and,  at  first  sight,  lamentable  decline,  in 
apparent  depth  and  vitality  of  spiritual  experience.  The 
greatest  concerns  of  our  lives  are,  in  such  stages  of  our 
growth,  somehow  for  a  while  hidden,  even  forgotten.  We 
become  more  knowing,  more  clever,  more  critical,  more 
wary,  more  skeptical,  but  we  seemingly  do  not  grow  more 
profound  or  more  reverent.  We  find  in  the  world  much 
that  engages  our  curious  attention  ;  we  find  little  that  is 
sublime.  Our  world  becomes  clearer  ;  a  brilliant,  hard, 
mid-morning  light  shines  upon  everything ;  but  this  light 
does  not  seem  to  us  any  longer  divine.  The  deeper 
beauty  of  the  universe  fades  out;  only  facts  and  pro- 
blems are  left. 

Such  a  stage  in  human  experience  is  represented,  in 
great  part,  by  the  philosophical  thinkers  who  flourish 
between  the  time  of  Spinoza's  death,  in  1677,  and  the 
appearance  of  Kant's  chief  philosophical  work,  "  The  Cri» 
tique  of  Pure  Reason,"  in  1781.  It  is  the  period  which 


THE  REDISCOVERY   OF   THE  INNER   LIFE.  69 

has  been  especially  associated,  in  historical  tradition,  with 
the  eighteenth  century,  so  that  when  one  speaks  of  the 
spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century,  he  is  likely  to  be  refer- 
ring to  this  skeptical  and  critical  mood,  to  this  hard,  mid- 
morning  light  of  the  bare  understanding,, beneath  which 
most  of  these  thinkers  of  our  period  saw  all  their  world 
lying.  When  I  undertake  to  describe  such  a  time,  I 
therefore  feel  in  its  spirit  a  strong  contrast  to  that  curious 
but  profound  sort  of  piety  which  we  were  describing  in 
the  last  lecture  in  the  case  of  Spinoza.  Spinoza,  indeed, 
was  in  respect  of  his  piety  a  man  of  marked  limitations. 
His  world  had  but  one  sublime  feature  in  it,  one  element 
of  religious  significance,  namely,  the  perfection  of  the 
divine  substance.  But  then  this  one  element  was  enough, 
from  his  point  of  view,  to  insure  an  elevated  and  un- 
troubled repose  of  faith  and  love,  which  justified  us  in 
drawing  a  parallel  between  his  religious  consciousness  and 
that  of  the  author  of  the  "Imitation  of  Christ."  This 
sort  of  piety  almost  disappears  from  the  popular  philos- 
ophy of  the  early  eighteenth  century.  What  the  people 
of  that  time  want  is  more  light  and  fewer  unproved  as- 
sumptions. 

As  against  the  earlier  seventeenth -century  thinkers, 
who,  as  you  remember,  also  abhorred  the  occult,  and 
trusted  in  reason,  the  thinkers  of  this  new  age  are  char- 
acterized by  the  fact  that  on  the  whole  they  have  a  great 
and  increasing  suspicion  of  even  that  rigid  mathematical 
method  of  research  itself  upon  which  men  like  Spinoza 
had  relied.  In  other  words,  whereas  the  men  of  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  had  trusted  to  reason 
alone,  the  men  of  the  subsequent  period  began,  first  hesi- 
tatingly, and  then  more  and  more  seriously,  to  distrust 
even  human  reason  itself.  After  all,  can  you  spin  a 
world,  as  Spinoza  did,  out  of  a  few  axioms  ?  Can  you 
permanently  revere  a  divine  order  that  is  perhaps  the 
mere  creature  of  the  assumptions  with  which  your  system 


70  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

happened  to  start?  The  men  of  the  new  age  are  not 
ready  to  answer  "  Yes  "  to  such  questions.  They  must  re- 
flect, they  must  peer  into  reason  itself.  They  must  ask, 
Whence  arise  these  axioms,  how  come  we  by  our  knowledge, 
of  what  account  are  our  mathematical  demonstrations,  and 
of  what,  after  all,  does  our  limited  human  nature  permit 
us  to  be  sure  ?  Once  started  upon  this  career,  the  thought 
of  the  time  is  driven  more  and  more,  as  we  have  already 
said,  to  the  study  of  human  nature,  as  opposed  to  the  ex- 
clusive study  of  the  physical  universe.  The  whole  range 
of  human  passion,  so  far  as  the  eighteenth  century  knew 
about  it,  is  criticised,  but  for  a  good  while  in  a  cautious, 
analytical,  cruelly  scrutinizing  way,  as  if  it  were  all  some- 
thing suspicious,  misleading,  superstitious.  The  coldness 
of  the  seventeenth  century  is  still  in  the  air ;  but  Spi- 
noza's sense  of  sublimity  is  gone.  Spinoza  himself,  you 
remember,  had  altogether  rejected,  as  occult,  everything 
miraculous,  marvelous,  extra-natural.  Not  the  thunder  or 
the  earthquake  or  the  fire  could  for  him  contain  God ;  God 
was  in  the  still  small  voice  that  the  wise  man  alone  heard. 
Now  the  popular  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century  i 
more  and  more  approached  a  position  which  unconsciously 
agreed  with  Spinoza's  in  a  number  of  respects.  It  cor- 
dially recognized,  for  instance,  that  the  earthquake,  say 
the  great  Lisbon  earthquake  of  1758,  was  a  fearful  thing, 
but  that  God  was  very  certainly  not  in  that  earthquake. 
It  could  readily  make  out  the  same  thing  concerning  any 
amount  of  thunder,  fire,  or  wind  that  you  might  produce 
for  inspection.  But  it  went  one  step  further  than  Spi- 
noza's wise  man,  and  was  forced  to  observe,  that,  after  con- 
siderable scrutiny,  it  had  as  yet  been  able  to  detect  in  the 
world  of  reason  and  experience  no  still,  small  voice  what- 
soever. That  at  least,  as  I  say,  was  the  outcome  of  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  thought  of  the  time.  It  was 
indeed  not  the  outcome  of  all  the  thinking  of  this  age.  In 
Leibnitz-,  who  was  a  younger  contemporary  of  Spinoza,  and 


THE   REDISCOVERY   OF  THE  INNER   LIFE.  71 

who  flourished  in  the  closing  decades  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the  new  period,  philo- 
sophical theology  found  an  expositor  of  the  greatest  specu- 
lative ingenuity  and  of  the  most  positive  tendency.  Later, 
in  the  ever-fascinating  Bishop  Berkeley,  not  merely  theo- 
logical doctrine,  but  a  profoundly  spiritual  idealism  got 
voice.  In  Rousseau,  a  new  era  of  sentimental  piety  found 
its  beginning,  and  all  this  movement  led  erelong  to  Kant 
himself.  But  for  the  moment  I  am  speaking  of  tenden- 
cies in  a  most  general  way,  and  this  negative,  this  cautious, 
skeptical  attitude,  is  the  one  most  observable  in  the  phi- 
losophy of  our  period. 

I. 

Those  of  us  who  look  to  philosophy  for  positive  expe- 
riences, rather  than  for  technical  instruction,  will, at  first 
sight ;  regard  such  a  period  as  this  with  some  natural 
indifference.  The  skeptic  is  not  always  an  interesting 
person ;  but  then,  you  must  remember,  as  skeptic  he  does  n't 
want  to  be  interesting.  He  only  wishes  to  be  honest. 
He  is  meanwhile  not  only  to  be  tolerated ;  he  is  also 
indispensable.  Philosophical  thought  that  has  never  been 
skeptical  is  sure  not  to  be  deep.  The  soul  that  never  has 
doubted  does  not  know  whether  it  believes ;  and  at  all 
events  the  thinker  who  has  not  dwelt  long  in  doubt  has  no 
rights  to  high  rank  as  a  reflective  person.  In  fact,  a  study 
of  history  shows  that  if  there  is  anything  that  human 
thought  and  cultivation  have  to  be  deeply  thankful  for,  it 
is  an  occasional  but  truly  great  and  fearless  age  of  doubt. 
You  may  rightly  say  that  doubt  has  no  value  in  itself. 
Its  value  is  in  what  it  leads  to.  But  then  consider  what 
ages  of  doubt  have  led  to.  Such  an  age  in  Greece  pro- 
duced that  father  of  every  humane  sort  of  philosophizing, 
Socrates.  The  same  age  nourished  with  doubts  the  di- 
vine thought  of  Plato.  Another  and  yet  sterner  age  of 
doubt  brought  about  the  beginnings  of  Christian  thought, 
prepared  the  Roman  empire  for  the  new  faith,  and  saved 


72  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

the  world  from  being  ruined  by  the  multitudinous  fanati« 
cal  rivals  of  Christianity.  Yet  a  third  great  age  of  doubt 
began,  at  the  Renaissance,  the  history  of  modern  literature, 
and  made  the  way  plain  for  whatever  was  soundest  about 
the  Reformation.  And  a  fourth  age  of  doubt,  the  one 
under  our  consideration  in  this  present  lecture,  proved 
more  fruitful  for  good  to  humanity  than  a  half  dozen 
centuries  of  faith  had  done  at  another  time.  For,  as  we 
shall  see,  this  eighteenth-century  doubting  drove  thinkers 
from  the  study  of  nature  to  the  study  first  of  human 
reason,  then  of  human  conscience,  then  of  all  the  human 
heart  and  soul,  and  meanwhile  cleared  the  way  for  those 
triumphs  of  the  spirit  over  great  evils  which  have  taken 
place  from  the  moment  of  the  French  Revolution  until 
now.  Despise  not  doubting  ;  it  is  often  the  best  service 
thinking  men  can  render  to  their  age.  Condemn  it  not : 
it  is  often  the  truest  piety.  And  when  I  say  this  I  do 
not  mean  merely  to  repeat  cant  phrases.  I  speak  with 
reason.  Doubt  is  never  the  proper  end  of  thinking,  but 
it  is  a  good  beginning.  The  wealth  of  truth  which  our 
life,  our  age,  our  civilization,  our  religion,  our  own  hearts 
may  contain,  is  not  quite  our  property  until  we  have  won 
it.  And  we  can  win  it  only  when  we  have  first  doubted 
the  superficial  forms  in  which  at  the  outset  it  presents 
j,  itself  to  our  apprehension.  Every  true  lover  has  in  the 
••  beginning  of  his  love  grave  doubts  of  his  beloved's  affection 
for  him.  And  such  doubts  often  take  on  bitter  and  even 
cynical  forms  in  his  soul  in  the  various  bad  quarters  of  an 
hour  that  fall  to  his  lot.  Doubt,  however,  is  not  the  foe, 
but  the  very  inspirer  of  his  love.  It  means  that  the  be- 
loved is  yet  to  be  won.  It  means  that  the  simple  warmth 
of  his  aspiration  is  n't  enough,  and  that,  if  the  beloved  is 
worth  winning,  she  is  worth  wooing  through  doubt  and 
uncertainty  for  a  good  while.  Moreover,  it  is  not  the 
fashion  of  the  beloved,  in  the  typical  case,  to  be  especially 
forward  in  quelling  such  doubts,  by  making  clear  her  atti« 


THE   REDISCOVERY   OF  THE  INNER  LIFE.  73 

tude  too  soon.  If  it  were,  love-making  might  be  a  simpler 
affair,  but  would  not  be  so  significant  an  experience  as  it 
is.  Doubt  is  the  cloud  that  is  needed  as  a  background  for 
love's  rainbow.  Even  so  it  is,  however,  in  the  world  of 
abstractor  thought.  The  more  serious  faiths  of  humanity 
can  only  be  won,  if  at  all,  by  virtue  of  much  doubting. 
The  divine  truth  is  essentially  coy.  You  woo  her,  you 
toil  for  her,  you  reflect  upon  her  by  night  and  by  day,  you 
search  through  books,  study  nature,  make  experiments, 
dissect  brains,  hold  learned  disputations,  take  counsel  of 
the  wise ;  in  fine,  you  prepare  your  own  ripest  thought,  and 
lay  it  before  your  heavenly  mistress  when  you  have  done 
your  best.  Will  she  be  pleased  ?  Will  she  reward  you 
with  a  glance  of  approval  ?  Will  she  say,  Thou  hast  well 
spoken  concerning  me  ?  Who  can  tell  ?  Her  eyes  have 
their  own  beautiful  fashion  of  looking  far  off  when  you 
want  them  to  be  turned  upon  you  ;  and,  after  all,  perhaps 
she  prefers  other  suitors  for  her  favor.  The  knowledge 
that  she  is  of  sufficiently  exalted  dignity  to  be  indifferent 
to  you,  if  she  chooses,  is  what  constitutes  the  mood  known 
as  philosophical  skepticism.  You  see  that,  in  sound- 
hearted  thinkers,  it  is  like  the  true  lover's  doubt  whether 
his  unwon  mistress  regards  him  kindly  or  no.  It  is  not, 
then,  a  deadening  and  weakening  mood ;  it  is  the  very  soul 
of  philosophical  earnestness. 

Meanwhile,  in  describing  the  skepticism  of  our  period 
I  am  far  from  wishing  to  trouble  you  with  its  endlessly 
varied  technical  subtleties.  These  lectures  are  throughout 
selective,  and  they  sacrifice  numberless  intrinsically  im- 
portant aspects  of  our  various  subjects,  in  order  to  be  able 
to  seize  upon  a  few  significant  features,  and  to  hold  these 
up  to  your  view.  I  cannot  warn  you  too  much  that  there 
is  no  chance  of  completeness  of  treatment  anywhere  in  the 
course  of  our  brief  work  together.  I  spared  you,  in  the 
last  lecture,  whole  cargoes  of  problems  which  are  consigned 
to  every  special  student  of  Spinoza.  I  shall  omit  in  this 


74  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

every  mention  of  innumerable  significant  features  in  the 
philosophy  of  our  present  period.  All  this  is  a  matter 
of  course.  I  remind  you  of  it  only  to  excuse  an  immediate 
and  somewhat  dry  statement  of  the  few  features  of  this 
eighteenth-century  skepticism  to  which  I  intend  to  con- 
fine myself  in  what  follows. 

n. 

There  are  certain  philosophic  problems  of  which  you  are 
sure,  sooner  or  later,  to  have  heard  something  in  general 
literature,  and  for  which  the  time  from  Spinoza  to  Kant 
is  at  least  partially  responsible.  I  want  to  set  forth  a 
little  of  the  growth  of  these  problems,  never  forgetting,  I 
hope,  that  they  interest  us  here  in  their  human  rather  than 
in  their  technical  aspects,  and  that  we  are  above  all  con- 
cerned in  them  as  leading  to  Kant  himself,  and  to  those 
who  came  after  him.  And  my  selection  is  as  follows :  — 

You  have  all  heard  about  the  controversy  as  to  whether 
man's  knowledge  of  more  significant  truth  is  innate,  or 
whether  it  comes  to  him  from  without,  through  his  senses ; 
or,  otherwise,  as  to  whether  the  mind  at  birth  is  a 
tabula  rasa,  a  blank  white  piece  of  innocent  paper,  upon 
which  experience  writes  whatever  it  will,  or  whether  the 
soul  is  endowed  from  the  start  with  certain  inborn  ration- 
al possessions,  —  a  divine  law,  for  instance,  written  on  the 
tablets  of  the  heart,  a  divine  wisdom  about  number  and 
space,  registered  in  some  imperishable  form  in  our  very 
structures.  You  may  have  met  with  more  or  less  elabo- 
rate arguments  upon  this  topic.  I  do  not  know  whether  it 
has  ever  had  more  than  the  interest  of  a  curious  problem 
to  many  of  us.  I  do  know  that  in  many  styles  of  treat- 
ment it  must  appear  as  a  sort  of  hackneyed  debating-club 
question,  an  apparently  excellent  one  of  its  sort,  but  a 
rather  dry  bone  of  contention,  after  all. 

But  you  now  know  that  philosophic  research  is  no  affair 
of  the  debating  clubs,  but  a  struggle  of  humanity  to  make 


THE  REDISCOVERY   OF  THE  INNER   LIFE.  75 

its  own  deepest  interests  articulate,  and  therefore  you  will 
not  expect  me  to  deal  with  this  question  after  the  forensic 
fashion.  What  I  want  to  do  is  this  :  — 

I  want  to  suggest  summarily  the  origin  of  the  contro- 
versy about  the  innate  ideas,  and  to  show  you  what  inter- 
est first  led  men  to  the  question.  Then,  I  want  to  indicate 
the  value  of  the  controversy  as  bringing  about  that  study 
of  man's  inner  life  which,  at  the  close  of  the  century, 
bore  fruit  in  the  great  Romantic  movement  itself.  Fi- 
nally, I  want  to  narrate  how  the  problems  erelong  took 
form,  what  skeptical  outcome  the  discussion,  upon  one 
side,  seemed  to  have,  and  what  solution,  what  re-winning 
of  the  great  spiritual  faiths  of  humanity,  it  suggested  on 
the  other.  In  this  way  I  shall  try  to  prepare  you  for  that 
stupendous  revolution  of  philosophic  thought  which  is 
associated  with  the  name  of  Kant. 

For  the  first,  then,  as  to  the  origin  of  the  controversy 
about  the  innate  ideas.  I  shall  not  go  back  farther  hi 
the  history  of  thought  than  to  Descartes,  1596-1650,  a 
predecessor  of  Spinoza,  and  the  man  whose  name  usually 
begins  the  lists  of  modern  philosophers  proper,  as  they  are 
set  forth  in  the  text-books  of  the  history  of  philosophy. 
Had  I  been  engaged  in  technical  teaching,  it  would  have 
been  my  duty,  in  the  last  lecture,  to  describe  the  highly 
interesting  relation  in  which  Spinoza's  doctrine  stands  to 
that  of  his  predecessor.  As  it  is,  I  have  so  far  passed 
Descartes  over.  At  present  I  must  mention,  in  a  word, 
one  or  two  features  of  his  doctrine.  Descartes  had 
early  become  dissatisfied  with  the  scholastic  philosophy 
which  he  had  learned  at  Jesuit  hands,  and  decided  to  think 
out  a  system  for  himself.  He  began  his  reasoning  by  a 
formal  philosophical  doubt  about  everything  that  could 
conceivably  be  doubted,  and  then  proceeded  to  examine 
whether  any  unassailable  certainty  was  still  left  him. 
He  found  such  an  absolutely  unassailable  assurance  in  his 
•wn  existence  as  a  thinking  being,  and  accordingly  begaq 


76  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

his  positive  doctrine  with  the  famous  principle,  u  Cogito, 
ergo  sum, "  "  I  think,  and  so  I  exist.  "  He  proceeded 
from  this  beginning  to  prove  the  existence  of  God,  and 
then  the  existence  of  two  so-called  substances,  mind  and 
matter,  as  comprising  the  whole  world  of  which  we  mortals 
know  anything.  The  laws  of  matter  he  found  to  be  those  of 
mathematics,  and  of  the  elementary  physics  of  his  time. 
Of  mind  he  also  studied  the  constitution  as  well  as  he 
could,  and  the  result  appeared  in  several  elaborate  works. 
Now  the  principle  on  which  Descartes  proceeded  through- 
out his  investigations  was  this:  "My  own  existence 
is  the  standard  assurance  of  my  thought.  I  %now 
that  /  at  least  am.  But  surely,  if,  on  examining  some 
principle,  say  an  axiom  in  geometry,  I  perceive  that  it  is 
as  plain  to  me,  as  clear,  as  distinct,  as  is  my  own  existence, 
then  indeed  it  must  be  as  certain  a  truth  as  my  existence." 
This,  I  say,  was  his  way  of  procedure,  whenever  he  was 
puzzled  about  a  principle.  "  Is  it  as  clear  to  me  as  my  own 
existence ;  or  can  I  somehow  make  it  as  clear  and  dis- 
tinct ?  Well,  then,  it  is  true.  Is  it  less  clear  ?  Then  I 
must  examine  it  still  further,  or  lay  it  aside  as  doubtful." 
By  this  fashion  of  procedure,  which  Descartes  regarded 
as  the  typically  rational  one,  he  managed  to  collect  after 
a  time  a  very  goodly  stock  of  sure  and  clear  principles. 
Others  have  n't  always  found  them  all  as  clear  and  sure 
as  did  Descartes,  but  that  concerns  us  not  now.  Well, 
Descartes  had  a  name,  or  in  fact  a  brace  of  names,  for 
these  principles  of  his.  He  called  them  "  eternal  truths," 
and  he  also  called  them  "  innate  "  ideas  or  truths.  We 
know  them  because  it  is  of  the  nature  of  our  reason  to  know 
them.  We  know  them  whenever  we  come  to  look  at  them 
squarely,  whether  we  ever  saw  them  in  this  light  before  or 
not.  That  2  +  2  =  4,  that  things  equal  to  the  same  thing 
are  equal  to  each  other,  these  are  examples  of  such  truths. 
They  are  as  clear  to  me  as  that  I  myself  exist.  They  are 
clear  to  me  because  my  reason  makes  them  so,  and  that  is 


THE   REDISCOVERY   OF   THE  INNEB   LIFE.  77 

the  sort  of  reason  I  have.  They  are  innate  in  me.  I 
don't  see  them  with  my  bodily  eyes.  I  just  know  them,  be- 
cause I  do  know  them,  and  I  know  them  also  to  be  eternal. 

Innate  truths  then,  for  Descartes,  are  of  this  sort. 
He  is  n't  so  much  interested  in  finding  out  how  so  many 
truths  could  be  innate  in  one  poor  little  human  soul  all 
at  once,  as  he  is  interested  in  singling  them  out  and  writ- 
ing down  bookfuls  of  them.  The  seventeenth  century, 
you  remember,  was  not  much  interested  in  man  him- 
self, but  was  very  much  interested  in  eternal  truth. 
Hence  Descartes  makes  light  of  the  problem  how  all  this 
thought-stuff  could  somehow  be  innate  in  a  soul  with- 
out the  poor  soul's  ever  even  guessing  the  fact  until  it  had 
studied  philosophy.  Yet  of  course  if  one  becomes  strongly 
interested  in  human  nature  for  its  own  sake,  this  problem 
which  Descartes  ignored  must  come  to  the  front. 

The  true  interest  of  this  problem,  then,  lies  in  the  fact 
that  by  reflecting  upon  it  philosophers  have  been  led  to 
some  of  the  deepest  undertakings  of  modern  thought. 
For  the  moment  it  comes  up  as  a  question  of  mere  idle 
curiosity.  As  such,  however,  the  question  was  rather 
tauntingly  suggested  to  Descartes  himself  by  certain  of  his 
opponents.  "  How  can  so  many  ideas  be  innate  ?  "  they 
said.  "  Observe,  children  don't  know  these  truths  of  yours, 
and  could  n't  even  grasp  them.  Much  less  could  infants. 
And  yet  you  call  them  innate."  Descartes,  thus  chal- 
lenged, replied  curtly,  but  not  unskillfully.  They  may  be 
innate,  he  said  (in  substance),  as  predispositions,  which  in 
infants  have  n't  yet  grown  to  conscious  rank.  The  thing 
is  simple  enough.  In  certain  families,  so  Descartes  fur- 
ther explains  (I  do  not  quote  his  words  but  give  their 
sense),  good-breeding  and  the  gout  are  innate.  Yet  of 
course,  as  he  implies,  the  children  of  such  families  have 
to  be  instructed  in  deportment,  and  the  infants  just  learn- 
ing to  walk  seem  happily  quite  free  from  gout.  Even 
so,  geometry  is  innate  in  us,  but  it  does  n't  come  to  our 


78  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

consciousness  without  much  trouble.  With  the  taunting 
questions  put  to  Descartes,  and  his  example  about  the 
heredity  of  good-breeding  and  the  gout,  the  question  of 
the  innate  ideas  enters  modern  philosophy.  It  was  later 
to  grow  much  more  important. 

in. 

In  Locke's  famous  "  Essay  on  the  Human  Understand- 
ing," published  in  1689—90,  the  investigation  may  be  said  to 
have  been  fairly  opened.  Locke  was  born  in  the  same  year 
as  Spinoza.  Had  he  died  when  Spinoza  died,  the  English 
thinker  would  never  have  been  heard  of  in  the  history  of 
thought.  In  Locke's  patient  devotion  to  a  detailed  inves- 
tigation, we  find  a  quality  that  reminds  us  of  the  most 
marked  characteristic  of  another  great  Englishman,  the 
scientific  hero  of  our  own  day,  Darwin.  Locke  was  early 
busy  with  philosophy,  natural  science,  and  medicine. 
Later,  he  was  for  a  short  time  abroad,  in  diplomatic  ser- 
vice, and  then  lived  long  as  the  intimate  friend  of  Lord 
Anthony  Ashley,  afterwards  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  whose 
political  fortunes  he  followed.  His  whole  life  was  a  min- 
gling of  study,  private  teaching,  writing  and  practical  poli- 
tics. His  character  is  thoroughly  English.  There  is 
that  typical  clearness  in  seizing  and  developing  his  own 
chief  ideas,  and  that  manly,  almost  classically  finished 
stubbornness  as  against  all  foreign,  mystical,  and  especially 
Continental  ideas,  which  usually  mark  the  elder  English 
thinkers.  Give  Locke  a  profound  problem  like  that  of  the 
freedom  of  the  will,  and  he  flounders  helplessly.  Ask 
him  to  look  at  things  from  a  novel  point  of  view,  ami  he 
cannot  imagine  what  fancy  you  can  be  dreaming  of.  But 
leave  him  to  himself,  and  he  shows  you  within  his  awn 
range  a  fine,  sensible,  wholesome  man  at  work,  a  thorough 
man,  who  has  seen  the  world  of  business  as  well  as  the 
world  of  study,  and  who  believes  in  business-like  meth- 
ods in  his  philosophy.  His  style,  to  be  sure,  is  endlessly 


THE   REDISCOVERY   OF   THE   INNER   LIFE.  79 

diffuse,  yet  without  being  precisely  wearisome,  because, 
after  all,  it  is  itself  the  diffuseness  of  a  man  of  business, 
whose  accounts  cover  many  and  various  transactions,  and 
who  has  to  set  down  all  the  items.  Nobody  can  fail  to 
respect  Locke,  unless,  to  be  sure,  his  work  is  employed  as 
a  text-book  for  classes  that  are  too  immature  to  grapple 
with  him.  It  has  too  frequently  been  thus  abused,  to  the 
great  injury  of  the  excellent  man's  popular  fame. 

Locke  made,  as  everybody  knows,  short  work  of  all  in- 
nate ideas.  He  found  none.  Infants,  with  their  rattles, 
show  no  sign  of  being  aware  that  things  which  are  equal 
to  the  same  things  are  equal  to  each  other.  Locke  him- 
self, to  be  sure,  is  a  poor  expert  concerning  infants,  as  is 
evident  from  many  things  that  he  says  about  them,  in  the 
course  of  his  book,  but  as  to  this  matter  he  is  not  only 
.confident  but  right.  As  for  the  hereditary  predispositions, 
.similar  to  good-breeding  and  the  gout,  Locke  in  one  or 
two  passages  recognizes  that  there  may,  indeed  must  be, 
such  things.  But  he  does  not  see  of  what  service  they 
could  be  in  forming  knowledge,  were  it  not  for  our  senses. 

What  interests  us  most  in  Locke,  however,  is  not  this 
negative  part  of  his  argument,  but  bis  general  view  of  the 
nature,  powers  and  scope  of  human  reason,  a  view  which 
introduces  a  whole  century  of  research  into  man's  inner 
life.  In  the  preface  to  his  Essay,  Locke  describes  to 
us  the  history  of  his  book.  "  Were  it  fit,"  he  says,  ad- 
dressing the  reader,  "  to  trouble  thee  with  the  history 
of  this  essay,  I  should  tell  thee  that  five  or  six 
friends  meeting  at  my  chamber,  and  discoursing  on  a 
subject  very  remote  from  this,  found  themselves  quickly 
at  a  stand  by  the  difficulties  that  rose  on  every  side.  Af- 
ter we  had  awhile  puzzled  ourselves,  without  coming  any 
nearer  a  resolution  of  those  doubts  which  perplexed  us,  it 
came  into  my  thoughts  that  we  took  a  wrong  course,  and 
that  before  we  set  ourselves  upon  inquiries  of  that  nature, 
it  was  necessary  to  examine  our  own  abilities,  and  see 


80  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

what  objects  our  understandings  were,  or  were  not,  fitted 
to  deal  with.  This  I  proposed  to  the  company,  who  ali 
readily  assented  ;  and  thereupon  it  was  agreed  that  this 
should  be  our  first  inquiry.  Some  hasty  and  undigested 
thoughts  on  a  subject  I  had  never  before  considered,  which 
I  set  down  against  our  next  meeting,  gave  the  first  en- 
trance into  this  discourse ;  which,  having  been  thus  begun 
by  chance,  was  continued  by  entreaty ;  written  by  incoher- 
ent parcels ;  and,  after  long  intervals  of  neglect,  resumed 
again,  as  my  humor  or  occasions  permitted,  and  at  last, 
in  a  retirement,  where  an  attendance  on  my  health  gave  me 
leisure,  it  was  brought  into  that  order  thou  now  seest  it." 
In  this  modest  way  Locke  introduces  a  book  whose 
historical  value  lies  precisely  in  this  insistence  upon  the 
importance  of  knowing  our  own  understandings,  as  a  pre- 
liminary to  every  sort  of  research.  And  how  great  this 
historical  value  of  the  book !  Locke  and  his  five  or  six 
friends  fall  to  discussing,  in  club  fashion,  certain  unnamed 
problems.  They  find  themselves  in  a  quandary.  Locke 
proposes  that  they  go  back  on  their  own  track  a  little  and 
study  the  structure  and  powers  of  the  understanding  itself. 
He  himself  begins  the  analysis,  the  entreaty  of  his  friends 
leads  him  to  continue  the  research.  The  result  is  a  big 
book,  sensible,  many-sided,  influential.  It  arouses  a  great 
controversy,  and  herefrom  springs,  first  the  philosophic 
movement  from  Locke  through  Leibnitz,  through  the  wou- 

o  o 

derful  Berkeley,  through  the  ingenious,  fearless,  and 
doubting  Hume,  to  Kant  himself,  and  European  thought 
is  transformed.  Meanwhile,  from  the  same  root  grow 
other  inquiries  into  the  mind  of  man.  The  great  English 
moralists  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  stately  row,  Shaftes- 
bury,  Hutcheson,  Butler,  Adam  Smith,  and  Hume  once 
more,  set  forth  the  mysteries  of  the  moral  consciousness. 
The  general  public  is  aroused.  A  subjective,  a  humane 
mode  of  inquiry  becomes  everywhere  prominent.  Much 
of  all  this  is  cold  and  skeptical  in  tone.  In  France  it  givei 


THK   REDISCOVERY   OF  THE   INNER   LIFE.  81 

ns  the  encyclopedists,  such  as  Diderot.  But  the  same 
movement  also  gives  us  Rousseau.  The  modern  novel, 
too,  that  great  analyst  of  the  mind  and  the  heart  of  every 
man,  takes  its  rise.  I  think  I  am  not  wrong  in  attribut- 
ing the  novel  largely  to  that  interest  in  analysis  for  which 
Locke  stood.  Yonder  mere  outer  nature  is  no  longer 
everything.  And  erelong,  lo !  almost  before  they  know 
it,  the  nations  of  Europe  themselves  are  once  more 
plunged  into  the  very  midst  of  the  great  problems  of  the 
spirit.  For  at  length  the  inquiry  loses  its  negative  and 
skeptical  air  altogether.  The  world  glows  afresh.  Pas- 
sion, brought  by  all  this  out  of  its  hiding-places,  grows 
hot ;  men  have  once  more  found  something  to  die  for ;  and 
what  they  learn  to  die  for  in  the  revolutionary  period  is 
the  inner  life.  They  die  for  the  freedom  of  the  subject ; 
for  the  sacred  rights  of  humanity  ;  for  the  destruction  of 
inhuman  and  despotic  restraints.  They  make,  indeed,  vast 
blunders  in  all  this,  behead  an  innocent  queen,  set  up  a  new 
despot  merely  because  his  rule  is  n't  traditional,  die  amid 
the  snows  of  Russia  for  a  bare  whim,  in  short  sin  atro- 
ciously, but  meanwhile  they  cleanse  Europe  of  a  whole 
dead  world  of  irrationalisms  ;  they  glorify  the  human  na- 
ture that  can  endure  and  suffer  so  much  for  the  sake  of 
coming  to  possess  itself ;  they  create  our  modern  world. 
And  all  this,  I  say,  because  they  had  rediscovered  the 
inner  life. 

Do  I  seem  to  exaggerate  the  significance  of  the  mere 
thinker  and  his  work  ?  I  assure  you  that  I  do  not.  My 
idea  of  the  mission  of  the  philosopher  is,  I  insist,  a  very 
moderate  one.  As  I  have  several  times  said,  he  does  n't 
create  the  passions  of  men  ;  he  makes  no  new  ideals.  His 
only  mission  is  to  direct  the  attention  of  man  to  the  pas- 
sions and  ideals  which  they  already  possess.  He  doubts, 
analyzes,  pries  into  this  and  that ;  and  men  say,  How  dry, 
how  repellent,  how  unpractical,  how  remote  from  life. 
But,  after  all,  he  is  prying  into  the  secret  places  of  the 


82  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

lightning  of  Jove ;  for  these  thoughts  and  passions  upon 
which  he  reflects  move  the  world.  He  says  to  his  time : 
This  and  this  hast  thou,  —  this  sense  of  the  rights  of  man, 
a  sword  of  the  spirit,  fashioned  to  slay  tyrants  ;  —  this  love 
of  liberty,  an  ideal  banner  bequeathed  thee  by  a  sacred 
past  to  cherish,  as  the  soldiers  of  old  cherished  the  stand- 
ard beneath  which  they  conquered  the  world.  Such 
things  he  says  always,  to  be  sure,  in  his  own  technical 
way,  and  for  a  time  nobody  finds  it  out  at  all  or  even  reads 
his  books.  But  at  length  discussion  begins  to  spread,  the 
word  of  wisdom  flies  from  one  book  to  another,  and  finally 
the  people  hear.  They  look  at  the  sword  and  at  the  ban- 
ner. No  philosopher  made  these.  They  are  simply  hu- 
manity's own  treasures.  The  philosopher  had  the  sole 
service  of  calling  attention  to  them,  because,  in  the  course 
of  his  critical  research,  he  found  them.  But  the  redis- 
covery, how  great  its  significance !  I  suppose  that  you 
have  frequently  heard  it  said  that  the  philosophers  had 
much  to  do  with  making  the  French  Revolution,  and  you 
have  wondered  how  this  was.  You  may  also  have  won- 
dered how  this  was  consistent  with  our  view  that  philoso- 
phers are  the  mere  critics  of  life.  I  show  you  the  solution. 
The  critic  creates  nothing,  he  only  points  out.  But  his 
pointing  may  show  you  powers  that  were  indeed  always 
there,  and  that  were  even  effective,  but  that,  once  afresh 
seen,  suggest  to  active  passion  a  thousand  devices  whereby 
the  world  is  revolutionized. 

We  return  to  Locke.  By  an  inquiry  of  the  sort  which  he 
has  described  to  us,  he  had  sought  to  comprehend  the  nature 
and  the  limits  of  our  understanding.  He  had,  as  we  saw, 
decided  that  innate  ideas  cannot  do  anything  for  know- 
ledge. And  the  force  of  this  notion  of  Locke's  really  was 
that,  according  to  him,  it  is  useless  to  assume,  as  the  basis 
of  our  human  reason,  anything  occult,  mysterious,  opaque, 
hidden  away  in  the  recesses  of  the  mind.  The  real  cause 
of  Locke's  hatred  of  innate  ideas  is  his  horror  of  anything 


THE  REDISCOVERY   OF   THE  INNER  LIFE.  83 

mystical.  If  thought  is  not  to  be  clear,  what  shall  be  clear  ? 
Hence,  if  you  pretend  to  have  any  knowledge,  you  must 
be  prepared  to  tell  where  it  comes  from.  It  won't  do  to 
appeal,  as  Descartes  did,  to  a  certain  impression  of  the 
clearness  and  distinctness  of  your  ideas.  Their  origin 
will  decide  their  value.  And  what  is  this  origin  ?  Locke 
puts  the  question  plainly,  at  the  beginning  of  the  second 
book  of  his  Essay,  and  answers  it  in  a  general  way. 
I  quote  the  whole  passage :  — 

"  Let  us,  then,  suppose  the  mind  to  be,  as  we  say,  white 
paper,  void  of  all  characters,  without  any  ideas  ;  how  comes 
it  to  be  furnished  ?  Whence  conies  it  by  that  vast  store 
which  the  busy  and  boundless  fancy  of  man  has  painted 
on  it  with  an  almost  endless  variety  ?  Whence  has  it  all 
the  materials  of  reason  and  knowledge  ?  To  this  I  answer, 
in  one  word,  From  Experience  ;  in  that  all  our  knowledge  is 
founded,  and  from  that  it  ultimately  derives  itself.  Our  ob- 
servation, employed  either  about  external  sensible  objects, 
or  about  the  internal  operations  of  our  minds,  perceived 
and  reflected  on  by  ourselves,  is  that  which  supplies  our 
understandings  with  all  the  materials  of  thinking.  These 
two  are  the  fountains  of  knowledge  from  whence  all  the 
ideas  we  have  or  can  naturally  have  do  spring."  "  First," 
he  continues,  "  our  senses,  conversant  about  particular  sen- 
sible objects,  do  convey  into  the  mind  several  distinct  per- 
ceptions of  things,  according  to  those  various  ways  wherein 
those  objects  do  affect  them  ;  and  thus  we  come  by  those 
ideas  we  have  of  yellow,  white,  heat,  cold,  soft,  hard,  bit- 
ter, sweet,  and  all  those  which  we  call  sensible  qualities ; 
which  when  I  say  that  the  senses  convey  into  the  mind, 
I  mean,  that  they  from  external  objects  convey  into  the 
mind  what  produces  there  those  perceptions.  This  great 
source  of  most  of  the  ideas  we  have,  depending  wholly 
upon  our  senses,  and  derived  by  them  to  the  understand- 
ing, I  call  Sensation. 

"  Secondly,  the  other  fountain,  from  which  experience 


84  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

furnisheth  the  understanding  with  ideas,  is  the  perception 
of  the  operations  of  our  mind  within  us,  as  it  is  employed 
about  the  ideas  it  has  got ;  which  operations,  when  the  soul 
comes  to  reflect  on  and  consider,  do  furnish  the  under- 
standing with  another  set  of  ideas,  which  could  not  be  had 
from  things  without ;  and  such  are  perception,  thinking, 
doubting,  believing,  reasoning,  knowing,  willing,  and  all 
the  different  actings  of  our  own  minds.  .  .  .  This  source 
of  ideas  every  man  has  wholly  in  himself  ;  and  though  it 
be  not  sense,  .  .  .  yet  it  is  very  like  it,  and  might  properly 
enough  be  called  internal  sense.  But  as  I  call  the  other 
sensation,  so  I  call  this  Reflection,  the  ideas  it  affords 
being  such  only  as  the  mind  gets  by  reflecting  on  its  own 
operations  within  itself.  .  .  .  These  two,  I  say,  namely, 
external  material  things,  as  the  objects  of  sensation,  and 
the  operations  of  our  own  minds  within,  as  the  objects  of 
reflection,  are  to  me  the  only  originals  from  whence  all 
our  ideas  take  their  beginnings." 

So  much,  then,  for  Locke's  notion  of  how  we  come  by 
knowledge.  I  quote  him  at  this  length,  because  his  view 
was  of  such  critical  importance  in  what  followed  in  all 
European  thought. 

You  will  ask  at  once,  What  sort  of  a  real  world  did 
Locke  manage  to  make  out  of  this  material  of  bare  sensa- 
tions and  reflections?  We  see,  touch,  smell,  taste  this 
our  world,  and  then  we  reflectively  observe  of  ourselves 
that  we  are  doubting,  willing,  hoping,  loving,  hating,  think- 
ing, and  thus  we  get  all  our  knowledge.  That  is  all  the 
mind  we  have.  That  is  the  human  understanding.  Such 
at  least  is  Locke's  view.  But  what  does  it  all  come  to? 
Is  the  result  a  materialism  pure  and  simple,  or  is  it  a  skep- 
ticism? Not  so.  Locke  was  an  Englishman  ;  he  saw, 
heard,  smelt,  tasted,  what  his  fellow-countrymen  also  did  ; 
and  he  reflected  upon  all  this  after  much  their  fashion. 
His  world,  therefore,  is  the  world  of  the  liberal  English 
thinker  of  his  day.  He  believes  in  matter  and  its  laws, 


THE   REDISCOVERY    OF   THE  INNER  LIFE.  85 

in  God  also,  and  in  revelation,  in  duty  and  in  the  human 
rights  of  the  British  freeman,  and  in  the  Essay  he  tries 
to  show  how  just  such  things  can  be  known  to  us  through 
bare  seeing,  hearing,  tasting,  and  the  rest,  coupled  with 
reflection  upon  what  we  are  doing.  There  is  nothing 
revolutionary  about  Locke's  own  view  of  his  world,  great 
as  was  the  revolution  that  he  prepared.  By  touch  we 
learn  that  there  are  substances  about  us,  solid,  space-oc- 
cupying, numerous,  movable.  By  all  our  senses  we  learn 
that  these  substances  have  many  curious  properties,  how 
or  why  brought  about,  we  cannot  discover.  Sugar  is 
sweet ;  gold  is  yellow  ;  various  drugs  have  specific  effects 
in  curing  diseases ;  water  flows  ;  iron  is  rigid  ;  every  sub- 
stance is  as  God  wills  it  to  be.  These  things  are  so, 
because  we  find  them  so.  Meanwhile,  being  reflective 
Englishmen,  we  can't  help  observing  that  all  these  things 
require  God  to  create  them  what  they  are,  because,  as 
one  sees,  things  always  have  adequate  causes ;  and  our 
minds,  too,  being  realities,  must  have  been  made  by  a 
thinker.  Moreover,  a  fair  study  of  the  evidence  of  reve- 
lation will  convince  any  reasonable  person  of  the  essential 
truths  of  the  Christian  religion,  and  that  is  enough. 

You  will  not  find  this  world  of  Locke  an  exciting  one. 
But  remember,  after  all,  what  it  is  that  he  has  done  for  us. 
He  has  tried  hard  to  remove  every  mystery  from  the  nature 
of  human  reason.  Because  innate  ideas,  the  eternal  truths 
of  Descartes,  were  mysterious,  he  has  thrown  them  over- 
board. Experience  it  is  that  writes  everything  on  the 
blank  tablet  of  the  mind.  But  thus  viewing  things,  Locke 
has  only  given  us  a  new  mystery.  Can  experience,  mere 
smelling,  tasting,  seeing,  together  with  bare  reflection,  do 
all  this  for  us,  —  give  us  God,  religion,  reality,  our  whole 
English  world  ?  Then  surely  what  a  marvelous  treasure- 
house  is  this  experience  itself !  Surely  ages  will  be  needed 
to  comprehend  it.  Locke  cannot  have  finished  it  off  thus 
in  one  essay. 


86  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

And  indeed  he  has  not  done  so.  His  book  is  the  mere 
beginning  both  of  the  psychology  of  experience,  and  of 
discussions  about  the  nature  and  limit  of  consciousness. 
The  truly  important  argument  over  Locke's  problems 
was  opened  by  Leibnitz,  the  great  Continental  thinker, 
whose  views  I  must  entirely  pass  over,  vastly  important  as 
they  are,  and  that  the  less  unwillingly  just  now  because 
his  answer  to  Locke,  written  about  1700,  was  not  pub- 
lished until  many  years  after  his  own  death.  I  must,  how- 
ever, ask  you  to  examine  the  next  step  forward  in  English 
philosophical  reflection,  the  one  taken  by  the  admirable 
and  fascinating  Berkeley. 

IV. 

The  world  that  Locke  found  with  his  senses  is  at  once 
too  poor  and  too  much  encumbered  for  Berkeley's  young 
enthusiasm.  Berkeley  is  a  born  child  of  Plato,  a  lineal 
descendant  of  a  race  whose  origin  is  never  very  far  off, 
and  is  divine.  Men  of  Berkeley's  type  are  born  to  see 
God  face  to  face ;  and  when  they  see  him,  they  do  so 
without  fear,  without  mystical  trembling,  without  being 
driven  to  dark  and  lofty  speech.  They  take  the  whole 
thing  as  a  matter  of  course.  They  tell  you  of  it  frankly, 
gently,  simply,  and  with  a  beautiful  childlike  surprise 
that  your  eyes  are  not  always  as  open  as  their  own. 
Meanwhile,  they  are  true  philosophers,  keen  in  dialectic, 
skillful  in  the  thrust  and  parry  of  debate,  a  little  loqua- 
cious, but  never  wearisome.  Of  the  physical  world  they 
know  comparatively  little,  but  what  they  know  they  love 
very  much.  A  very  few  lines  of  philosophical  research 
they  pursue  eagerly,  minutely,  fruitfully;  concerning 
others  they  can  make  nothing  but  the  most  superficial 
remarks.  They  produce  books  young,  and  with  marvel- 
ous facility.  They  have  a  full-fledged  system  ready  by  the 
time  they  are  twenty-five.  They  will  write  an  immortal 
work,  as  it  were,  over  night.  They  are,  for  the  rest,  through 


THE   REDISCOVERY   OF  THE  INNER   LIFE.  87 

and  through  poetical.  Each  one  of  their  essays  will  be  as 
crisp  and  delicate  as  a  good  sonnet.  Yet  what  they  lack 
is  elaboration,  wiliness,  and  architectural  massiveness  of 
research.  They  take  after  Plato,  their  father,  as  to  grace 
and  ingenuity.  His  life-long  patience  and  mature  pro- 
ductiveness they  never  reach.  The  world  finds  them  par- 
adoxical; refutes  them  again  and  again  with  a  certain 
Philistine  ferocity ;  makes  naught  of  them  in  hundreds  of 
learned  volumes  ;  but  returns  ever  afresh  to  the  hopeless 
task  of  keeping  them  permanently  naught.  In  the  heaven 
of  reflection,  amongst  the  philosophical  angels  who  con- 
template the  beatific  vision  of  the  divine  essence,  such 
spirits  occupy  neither  the  place  of  the  archangels,  nor  of 
those  who  speed  o'er  land  and  sea,  nor  yet  of  those  who 
only  stand  and  wait.  Their  office  is  a  less  serious  one. 
They  cast  glances  now  and  then  at  this  inspiring  aspect 
or  at  that  of  the  divine  essence,  sing  quite  their  own  song 
in  its  praise,  find  little  in  most  of  the  other  angels  that  can 
entertain  them,  and  spend  their  time  for  the  most  part  in 
gentle  private  musings,  many  of  which  (for  so  Berkeley's 
own  portrait  suggests  to  me)  they  apparently  find  far  too 
pretty  to  be  uttered  at  all.  We  admire  them,  we  may  even 
love  them ;  yet  no  one  would  call  them  precisely  heroes  of 
contemplation.  They  themselves  shed  no  tears,  but  they 
also  begin  no  revolutions,  are  apostles  of  no  world-wide 
movements. 

Berkeley's  grandly  simple  accomplishment,  as  you 
know,  lay  in  his  observation  that  in  the  world  of  the  senses, 
in  the  world  of  experience,  as  Locke  knew  it,  there  was 
properly  no  such  thing  as  material  substance  discoverable 
at  all.  The  world  of  sense-experience,  said  Berkeley,  is  a 
world  of  ideas.  I  have  an  idea,  say  of  this  fruit.  It  is  a 
complex  idea.  The  fruit  is  round,  soft,  pleasant  to  the 
taste,  orange-colored,  and  the  rest.  But  then,  as  you  see, 
All  these  things  that  I  know  about  the  fruit  are  just  my 
ideas.  Were  I  in  the  dark,  the  fruit  would  have  no  color. 


88  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

Do  I  refuse  to  bite  it,  the  taste  of  it  remains  a  bare  possi- 
bility, not  a  fact.  And  so  as  to  all  the  other  properties  of 
the  fruit.  All  these  exist  for  me  in  so  far  as  I  have  ideas 
of  them.  Have  I  no  idea  of  a  thing,  then  it  exists  not  for 
me.  This  is  Berkeley's  fundamental  thought,  but  he  does 
not  leave  it  in  such  absolute  and  crude  simplicity  as  this. 

His  deeper  significance  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  carries 
out  in  a  new  field  an  analysis  of  our  inner  life,  namely,  of 
a  portion  of  the  process  of  knowledge.  His  grandly  sim- 
ple idea,  here  applied,  leads  to  very  engaging  results ;  but 
they  are  results  which  no  other  philosopher  would  be 
likely  to  accept  without  at  once  carrying  them  further 
than  did  Berkeley.  The  young  student  of  Trinity  College 
early  became  fascinated  with  the  problem  of  the  theory  of 
vision.  We  seem  to  see  objects  about  us  in  a  space  of 
three  dimensions.  These  objects  look  solid,  move  about, 
stand  in  space  relations  to  one  another.  But  now,  after  all, 
how  can  we  possibly  see  distance  ?  Distance  runs  directly 
outward  from  my  eyes  ;  my  eyes  are  at  the  surface  of  my 
body,  and  a  distant  object  is  not ;  my  eyes  are  affected 
where  they  are,  and,  for  the  rest,  not  the  distance  of  the 
opposite  wall  as  such  affects  me,  but  the  wall  in  so  far  as 
rays  of  light  come  from  it.  All  this  even  Locke's  man 
of  plain  sense  has  to  admit.  How,  then,  if  distance  it- 
self is  not  one  of  my  visual  sensations,  if  distance  is  n't 
itself  color  or  light,  how  can  I  still  see  distance  ?  For  all 
that  I  see  is  after  all  not  even  the  object,  but  only  the 
color  and  light  of  the  object.  This  is  Berkeley's  pro- 
blem about  vision.  His  answer  was  early  this :  I  don't 
really  see  distance.  What  I  see  is  something  about  the 
color  or  shape  of  the  distant  object,  or  better  still  about 
the  feelings  that  accompany  in  rne  the  act  of  sight,  — 
something  which  is  to  me  a  sign  of  distance.  A  distant 
orange  is  n't  as  big  as  a  near  one.  That  is  one  sign  of  dis- 
tance then,  namely,  the  size  for  me  of  my  idea  of  a  patch 
of  color  which  I  see  when  I  look  at  the  orange.  Again, 


THE   REDISCOVERY  OF   THE   INNER   LIFE.  89 

very  distant  objects,  such  as  mountains,  are  known  to  be 
distant  because  they  look  to  me  blue.  In  short,  to  sum 
up,  my  apparent  seeing  of  distance  is  n't  any  direct  seeing 
of  distance  at  all.  It  is  a  reading  of  the  language  of 
sight,  as  this  is  exhibited  to  my  eyes  by  the  colors  and 
forms  of  things.  A  certain  look  of  things,  a  certain 
group  of  signs,  which  I  have  learned,  by  long  experience, 
to  interpret,  tells  me  how  far  off  these  things  about  me 
are.  Distance  is  n't  known  directly.  It  is  read  as  we 
read  a  language,  read  by  interpreting  the  signs  of  the 
sense  of  sight.  And  as  with  distance,  so  with  solidity.  I 
don't  really  see  things  as  solid.  The  solid  things  don't 
wander  in  through  my  eyes  to  my  soul.  But  there  are 
signs  of  solidity  about  the  look  of  the  things,  signs  that 
you  learn  to  copy  when  you  learn  to  draw  in  perspective, 
and  to  imitate  the  relief  of  objects ;  these  signs  are  the 
language  of  the  sense  of  sight.  You  learn,  when  you 
come  to  comprehend  this  language,  that  if  a  thing  looks 
in  a  certain  way,  has  a  certain  relief  of  colors,  a  certain 
perspective  arrangement  of  its  outlines,  that  then,  I  say, 
it  will  feel  solid  if  you  go  up  to  it  and  touch  it.  Infants 
don't  know  all  this  until  they  have  learned  to  read  the 
language  of  vision.  Hence  they  don't  see  things  as  solid 
for  a  good  while,  don't  judge  distances  accurately,  have 
no  eye  for  a  space  of  three  dimensions. 

Seeing,  then,  is  reading,  is  interpreting  a  world-lan- 
guage, is  anticipating  how  things  will  feel  to  your  touch 
by  virtue  of  the  signs  given  by  the  color,  light,  relief,  per- 
spective,  of  things.  Such  is  Berkeley's  view,  and  as  faf 
as  it  goes,  it  is  obviously  true.  But  he  is  not  content  to 
leave  his  thought  here.  He  goes  further.  What  is  all 
my  life  of  experience,  my  seeing,  feeling,  touching,  mov- 
ing about,  examining  my  world  ?  Is  n't  it  from  first  to 
last  a  learning  to  read  the  language  of  things  ?  Is  n't  it  a 
learning  to  anticipate  one  thing  by  virtue  of  the  signa 
that  are  given  of  its  presence  by  another  ?  Yes,  all  expert 


90  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

ence  is  after  all  learning  to  read.  And  this  reading,  what 
is  it  ?  It  is  merely  rightly  and  rationally  putting  together 
the  ideas  which  my  world  gives  me.  These  ideas  come  in 
certain  orders,  follow  certain  laws.  I  learn  these  laws, 
and  thus  I  read  my  world.  I  have  one  idea,  say  the  glow 
of  a  fire.  It  suggests  to  me  another  idea,  namely,  that  in 
case  I  go  near  the  fire  I  shall  feel  warm.  All  experience, 
then,  is  a  learning  how  my  ideas  ought  to  go  together ;  it 
is  a  learning  that  upon  one  idea  another  will  follow  under 
certain  circumstances.  What,  then,  is  this  world  of  my 
experience  ?  Is  it  anything  but  the  world  of  ideas  and  of 
their  laws  ?  What  existence  has  my  world  for  me  apart 
from  my  ideas  of  it?  What  existence  can  any  world 
have  apart  from  the  thought  of  some  thinker  for  whom 
it  exists  ?  Whose  language,  then,  am  I  reading  in  this 
world  before  me  ?  Whose  ideas  are  these  that  experience 
impresses  upon  me  ?  Are  they  not  God's  ideas  ?  Is  it 
not  his  language  that  I  read  in  nature  ?  Is  not  all  my 
life  a  talking  with  God  ? 

^  "  Some  truths  there  are,"  says  Berkeley,  "  so  near  and 
obvious  to  the  mind,  that  a  man  need  only  open  his  eyes 
to  see  them.  Such  I  take  this  important  one  to  be,  to 
wit,  that  all  the  choir  of  heaven  and  furniture  of  the 
earth,  in  a  word,  all  those  bodies  which  compose  the 
mighty  frame  of  the  world,  have  not  any  subsistence  with- 
out mind ;  that  their  being  is,  to  be  perceived  or  known ; 
that  consequently  so  long  as  they  are  not  actually  per- 
ceived by  me,  or  do  not  exist  in  my  mind,  or  that  of  any 
other  created  spirit,  they  must  either  have  no  existence  at 
all,  or  else  subsist  in  the  mind  of  some  eternal  spirit." 

This  is  Berkeley's  interpretation  and  extension  of 
Locke's  thought.  I  don't  ask  you  to  accept  or  to  reject  it, 
I  only  ask  you  to  see  once  more  how  it  holds  together.  Let 
us  review  it.  My  experience  is  a  learning  to  read  my 
world.  What  is  my  world  ?  Merely  the  sum  total  of 
my  ideas,  of  my  thoughts;  feelings,  sights,  sounds,  colors, 


THE  REDISCOVERY   OF   THE  INNER  LIFE.  91 

tastes.  I  read  these  when  one  of  them  becomes  sign  to 
me  of  another,  when  the  idea  of  a  glow  tells  me  of  the  yet 
unfelt  warmth  that  a  fire  will  arouse  in  me  if  I  approach 
it,  when  the  ideas  of  forms  and  shadows  warn  me  how  a 
solid  tlrng  will  feel  if  I  touch  it.  My  ideas  and  their 
laws,  thw  is  all  my  reality.  But  then  surely  I  am  not  the 
only  existence  there  is.  No,  indeed.  The  things  about 
me  are  indeed  only  my  ideas ;  but  I  am  not  the  author 
of  these  ideas.  This  language  of  experience,  those  signs 
of  the  senses,  which  I  decipher  — I  did  not  produce  them. 
Who  writes,  then,  this  language?  Who  forces  on  my 
mind  the  succession  of  my  ideas?  Who  spreads  out 
the  scroll  of  those  experiences  before  me  which  in  their 
totality  constitute  the  choir  of  heaven  and  the  furniture 
of  earth?  Berkeley  responds  readily.  The  sources  of 
my  ideas  are  two :  my  fellow-beings,  who  speak  to  me 
with  the  natural  voice,  and  God,  who  talks  to  me  in  the 
language  of  the  sense.  "  When,"  says  Berkeley,  "  I 
deny  sensible  things  an  existence  out  of  the  mind,  I  do 
not  mean  my  mind  in  particular,  but  all  minds.  Now 
it  is  plain  they  have  an  existence  exterior  to  my  mind, 
since  I  find  them  by  experience  to  be  independent  of 
it.  There  is  some  other  mind  wherein  they  exist,  dur- 
ing the  intervals  between  the  time  of  my  perceiving  them, 
as  likewise  they  did  before  my  birth,  and  would  do  after 
my  supposed  annihilation.  And  as  the  same  is  true  with 
regard  to  all  other  finite  created  spirits,  it  necessarily  fol- 
lows, there  is  an  omnipresent  eternal  mind,  which 
knows  and  comprehends  all  things,  and  exhibits  them  to 
our  view  in  such  a  manner,  and  according  to  such  rules, 
as  He  himself  hath  ordained,  and  are  by  us  termed  the 
laws  of  nature." 

Here  is  the  famous  idealism  of  Berkeley.  Never  was 
philosophical  idealism  more  simply  stated.  Nowhere  is 
there  a  better  introduction  to  a  doctrine  at  once  paradoxi- 
cal and  plausible,  namely,  the  idealistic  scheme  of  things, 


92  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

than  in  Berkeley's  early  essays.  They  are  favorites-^ 
these  essays  —  of  all  young  students  of  philosophy.  Aa 
you  read  them,  unprepared,  you  first  say,  How  wild  a 
paradox !  How  absurdly  opposed  to  common  sense  I 
Then  you  read  further  and  say,  How  plausible  this  Berke- 
ley is !  How  charming  his  style  !  How  clear  he  makes 
his  paradoxes  !  Perhaps,  after  all,  they  are  n't  paradoxes, 
but  mere  rewordings  of  what  we  all  mean.  He  knows  a 
real  world  of  facts,  too.  Nobody  is  surer  of  the  truths 
of  experience,  nobody  is  firmer  in  his  convictions  of  an 
outer  reality,  than  Berkeley.  Only  this  outer  reality  — 
what  is  it  but  God  directly  talking  to  us,  directly  impress- 
ing upon  us  these  ideas  of  the  "  choir  of  heaven  and  fur- 
niture of  earth?'*  In  sense,  in  experience,  we  have  God. 
He  is  in  matter.  Matter,  in  fact,  is  a  part  of  his  own 
self :  it  is  his  manifested  will,  his  plan  for  our  education, 
his  voice  speaking  to  us,  warning,  instructing,  guiding, 
amusing,  disciplining,  blessing  us,  with  a  series  of  orderly 
and  significant  experiences.  Well,  I  say,  as  you  read 
further,  the  beauty  of  Berkeley's  statement  impresses  you, 
you  are  half  persuaded  that  you  might  come  to  believe 
this ;  and  lo !  suddenly,  as  you  read,  you  do  believe  it,  if 
only  for  an  hour,  and  then,  in  a  curious  fashion,  the 
whole  thing  comes  to  look  almost  commonplace.  It  is  so 
obvious,  you  say,  this  notion  that  we  only  know  our  own 
ideas,  so  obvious  that  it  was  hardly  worth  while  to  write 
it  down.  After  all,  everybody  believes  that !  As  for  the 
notion  of  God  talking  to  us,  through  all  our  senses,  that 
is  very  pretty  and  poetical,  but  is  there  anything  very 
novel  about  the  notion  ?  It  is  the  old  design  argument 
over  again. 

So  I  say,  your  mood  alters  as  you  read  Berkeley.  The 
value  of  his  doctrine,  for  our  present  purposes,  lies  in  its 
place  in  this  history  of  the  rediscovery  of  the  inner  life 
which  we  are  following  in  this  lecture.  Of  the  truth  of 
Berkeley's  doctrine  I  have  just  now  nothing  to  say.  I  am 


THE   REDISCOVERY   OF   THE   INNER  LIFE.  93 

simply  narrating  to  you  Berkeley's  experience  of  spiritual 
things.  And  his  experience  was  this  :  that  our  conscious- 
ness of  outer  reality  is  a  more  subtle  and  complex  thing 
than  the  previous  age  had  suspected,  so  that  the  real  world 
must  be  very  different  from  the  assumed  substantial  and 
mathematical  world  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  so  that 
our  inner  life  of  sense  and  of  reason  needs  yet  a  new  and 
a  deeper  analysis.  Everything  in  this  whole  period 
makes,  you  see,  for  the  study  of  this  inner  life.  It  is  no 
matter  whether  you  are  a  philosopher,  and  write  essays  on 
the  "  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  or  whether  you 
are  a  heroine  in  an  eighteenth-century  novel,  and  write 
sentimental  letters  to  a  friend ;  you  are  part  of  the  same 
movement.  The  spirit  is  dissatisfied  with  the  mathemati- 
cal order,  and  feels  friendless  among  the  eternities  of  the 
seventeenth-century  thought.  The  spirit  wants  to  be  at 
home  with  itself,  well-friended  in  the  comprehension  of  its 
inner  processes.  It  loves  to  be  confidential  in  its  heart 
outpourings,  keen  in  its  analysis,  humane  in  its  attitude 
towards  life.  And  to  be  part  of  this  new  process  is  Berke- 
ley's significance. 

v. 

But  now,  if  you  are  to  enjoy  the  inner  life,  you  must 
bear  also  its  burdens  and  its  doubts.  To  become  sure  of 
yourself,  you  must  first  doubt  yourself.  And  this  doubt, 
this  skepticism,  which  self-analysis  always  involves,  who 
could  express  it  better  than  the  great  Scotchman,  David 
Hume  ?  Hume  is,  I  think,  next  to  Hobbes,  the  greatest 
of  British  speculative  thinkers,  Berkeley  occupying  the 
third  place  in  order  of  rank.  I  cannot  undertake  to 
describe  to  you  in  this  place  the  real  historical  signifi- 
cance of  Hume,  his  subtlety,  his  fearlessness,  his  fine 
analysis  of  certain  of  the  deepest  problems,  his  place  as 
the  inspirer  of  Kant's  thought,  his  whole  value  as  meta- 
physical teacher  of  his  time.  What  you  will  see  in  him 
is  merely  the  merciless  skeptic,  and,  in  this  superficial 


94  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

sketch  of  the  rediscovery  of  the  inner  consciousness,  I 
don't  ask  you  to  see  more.  Hume  accepted  Locke's 
belief  that  reason  is  merely  the  recorder  of  experience. 
He  carries  out  this  view  to  its  remotest  consequences. 
Our  minds  consist,  as  he  says,  of  impressions  and  ideas. 
By  impressions  he  means  the  experiences  of  sense;  by 
ideas  he  means  the  remembered  copies  of  these  experi- 
ences. You  see,  feel,  smell,  taste ;  and  you  remember 
having  seen,  felt,  tasted  or  smelt.  That  is  all.  You  have 
no  other  knowledge.  Upon  some  of  your  ideas,  namely 
those  of  quantity  and  number,  you  can  reason,  and  can 
even  discover  novel  and  necessary  truth  about  them. 
This  is  owing  to  the  peculiarity  of  these  ideas  and  of  the 
impressions  on  which  they  are  founded.  For  these  ideas, 
also,  even  all  the  subtleties  of  mathematical  science,  are 
faded  and  blurred  impressions  of  sense.  And,  as  it 
chances,  on  just  these  faded  impressions  you  can  reason. 
But  Berkeley  was  wrong  in  thinking  that  you  can  by 
searching  find  out  God,  or  anything  else  supersensual. 
Science  concerns  matters  of  fact,  as  the  senses  give  them, 
and  ends  with  these. 

With  this  general  view  in  mind,  let  us  examine,  in 
Hume's  fashion,  certain  of  the  most  familiar  conceptions 
of  human  reason.  Hume  is  afraid  of  nothing,  not  even 
of  the  presumptions  at  the  basis  of  physical  science. 
Matters  of  fact  he  respects,  but  not  universal  principles. 
"  There  are,"  says  Hume,  "  no  ideas  .  .  .  more  obscure 
than  those  of  power,  force,  or  necessary  connection."  Let 
us  look  a  little  more  closely  at  these  ideas.  Let  us  clear 
them  up  if  we  can.  How  useful  they  seem.  How  much 
we  hear  in  exact  science  about  something  called  the  law 
erf  causation,  which  says  that  there  is  a  necessary  connec- 
tion between  causes  and  effects,  that  given  natural  condi- 
tions have  a  "power"  to  bring  to  pass  certain  results, 
that  the  forces  of  nature  must  work  as  they  do.  Well, 
apply  to  such  sublime  and  far-reaching  ideas,  —  just  such 


THE  REDISCOVERY    OF  THE  INNER   LIFE.  95 

ideas,  you  will  remember,  as  seemed  to  Spinoza  so  signifi- 
cant,—  apply  to  them  Hume's  simple  criterion.  Ideas,  in 
order  to  have  a  good  basis,  must,  Hume  declares,  stand 
for  matters  of  fact,  given  to  us  in  the  senses.  "  It  is 
impossible  for  us  to  think,  of  anything  which  we  have  not 
antecedently  felt,  either  by  our  external  or  internal  senses." 
"  By  what  invention,  then,"  says  Hume,  "  can  we  throw 
light "  upon  ideas  that,  being  simple,  still  pretend  to  be 
authoritative,  "and  render  them  altogether  precise  and 
determinate  to  our  intellectual  view  ?  "  Answer  :  "  Pro- 
duce the  impressions  or  original  sentiments  from  which 
the  ideas  are  copied."  These  impressions  will  "  admit  of 
no  ambiguity."  So,  then,  let  us  produce  the  original  im- 
pression from  which  the  idea  of  causation,  of  necessary 
connection,  or  of  power  is  derived.  You  say  that  in 
nature  there  is  and  must  be  necessity.  Very  well,  let  us 
ask  ourselves  afresh  the  questions  that  we  asked  of  Locke. 
Did  you  ever  see  necessity  ?  Did  you  ever  hear  or  touch 
causation  ?  Did  you  ever  taste  or  smell  necessary  connec- 
tion? Name  us  the  original  impression  whence  comes 
your  idea.  "  When,"  says  Hume,  "  we  look  about  us 
towards  external  objects,  and  consider  the  operation  of 
causes,  we  are  never  able,  in  any  single  instance,  to  dis- 
cover any  power  or  necessary  connection,  any  quality 
which  binds  the  effect  to  the  cause,  and  renders  the  one 
an  infallible  consequence  of  the  other.  We  only  find  that 
the  one  does  actually  in  fact  follow  the  other.  The  im- 
pulse of  one  billiard  ball  is  attended  with  motion  in  the 
second.  That  is  the  whole  that  appears  to  the  outward 
senses."  "  In  reality,  there  is  no  part  of  matter  that  does 
ever  by  its  sensible  qualities  discover  any  power  or  energy, 
or  give  us  ground  to  imagine  that  it  could  produce  any- 
thing," until  we  have  found  out  by  experience  what  hap- 
pens in  consequence  of  its  presence.  Thus  outer  sense 
gives  us  facts,  but  no  necessary  laws,  no  true  causation, 
no  real  connection  of  events. 


96  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

We  must,  then,  get  our  idea  of  power,  of  necessary  con. 
nection,  from  within.  And  so,  in  fact,  many  have  thought 
that  we  do.  If  in  outer  nature  I  am  only  impressed  by 
matters  of  fact  about  billiard  balls  and  other  such  things, 
and  if  there  I  never  learn  of  causation,  do  I  not,  per- 
chance, directly  feel  my  own  true  power,  my  own  causal 
efficacy,  my  own  will,  making  acts  result  in  a  necessary 
way  from  my  purposes  ?  No,  answers  Hume.  If  I  ex- 
amine carefully  I  find  that  my  own  deeds  also  are  merely 
matters  of  fact,  with  nothing  causally  efficacious  about  my 
own  conscious  nature  to  make  them  obviously  necessary. 
After  all,  "  is  there  any  principle  in  nature  more  myste- 
rious than  the  union  of  soul  with  body  ?  "  "  Were  we 
empowered,"  adds  Hume,  "  to  remove  mountains,  or  con- 
trol the  planets  in  their  orbit,  this  extensive  authority 
would  not  be  more  extraordinary,  or  more  beyond  our 
comprehension,"  than  is  the  bare  matter  of  fact  that  we 
now  can  control  our  bodies  by  our  will.  In  inner  expe- 
rience, then,  just  as  in  outer,  we  get  no  direct  impression 
of  how  causes  produce  effects.  We  only  see  that  things 
do  often  happen  in  regular  ways.  In  experience,  then, 
"  all  events  seem  entirely  loose  and  separate.  One  event 
follows  another ;  but  we  can  never  observe  any  tie  be- 
tween them.  They  seem  conjoined,  but  never  connected. 
But  as  we  can  have  no  idea  of  anything  which  never  ap- 
peared to  our  outward  sense  or  inward  sentiment,  the 
necessary  conclusion  seems  to  be,  that  we  have  no  idea  of 
connection  or  power  at  all,  and  that  these  words  are  abso- 
lutely without  any  meaning."  From  this  seeming  conclu- 
sion, Hume  makes,  indeed,  an  escape,  but  one  that  is,  in 
fact,  not  less  skeptical  than  his  result  as  first  reached. 
The  true  original  of  our  idea  of  power,  and  so  of  causa- 
tion, he  says,  is  simply  this,  that  "  after  a  repetition  of 
similar  instances,  the  mind  is  carried,  by  habit,  upon  the 
appearance  of  one  event,  to  expect  its  usual  attendant, 
and  to  believe  that  it  will  exist."  "The  first  time  a 


THE  REDISCOVERY    OF   THE  INNER   LIFE.  97 

man  saw  the  communication  of  motion  by  impulse,  as  by 
the  shock  of  the  two  billiard  balls,  he  could  not  pronounce 
that  the  one  event  was  connected,  but  only  that  it  was 
conjoined,  with  the  other.  After  he  has  observed  several 
instances  of  this  nature,  he  then  pronounces  them  to  be 
connected.  What  alteration  has  happened  to  give  rise  to 
this  new  idea  of  connection  ?  Nothing  but  that  now  he 
feels  these  two  events  to  be  connected  in  his  imagination." 
Custom,  then,  mere  habit  of  mind,  is  the  origin  of  the  idea 
of  causation.  We  see  no  necessity  in  the  world.  We 
only  feel  it  there,  because  that  is  our  habit  of  mind,  our 
fashion  of  mentally  regarding  an  often-repeated  expe- 
rience of  similar  successions. 

The  importance  of  all  this  skepticism  lies,  as  you  of 
course  see,  in  its  removal  from  our  fact-world  of  just  the 
principles  that  the  seventeenth  century  had  found  so  in- 
spiring. "  It  is  of  the  nature  of  reason,"  Spinoza  had 
said,  "  to  regard  things  as  necessary."  Upon  that  rock 
he  had  built  his  faith.  His  wisdom  had  reposed  secure 
in  God,  in  whom  were  all  things,  just  because  God's 
nature  was  the  highest  form  of  necessity,  the  law  of  laws. 
And  now  comes  Hume,  and  calls  this  "  nature  of  reason  " 
a  mere  feeling,  founded  on  habit,  a  product  of  our  imagi- 
nation, no  matter  of  fact  at  all.  What  becomes,  then,  of 
Spinoza's  divine  order  ?  Has  philosophy  fallen  by  its 
own  hands?  Is  the  eternal  in  which  we  had  trusted 
really,  after  all,  but  the  mass  of  the  flying  and  discon- 
nected impressions  of  sense  ?  All  crumbles  at  the  touch  of 
this  criticism  of  Hume's.  All  becomes  but  the  aggregate 
of  the  disconnected  sense-impressions.  Nay,  if  we  find 
the  Holy  Grail  itself,  it,  too,  will  fade  and  crumble  into 
dust.  Hume  is  aware  of  some  such  result.  He  skillfully 
and  playfully  veils  the  extreme  consequences  at  times  by 
the  arts  of  his  beautiful  dialectic.  But  he  none  the  less 
rejoices  in  it,  with  all  the  fine  joy  of  the  merciless  foe  of 
delusions :  —  matters  of  fact,  relations  of  ideas,  —  these 


98  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

are  all  that  his  doctrine  leaves  us.  "When,"  he  once 
says,  "  we  run  through  libraries,  persuaded  of  these  prin- 
ciples, what  havoc  must  we  make?  If  we  take  in  our 
hand  any  volume  of  divinity  or  school  metaphysics,  for 
instance,  let  us  ask,  Does  it  contain  any  abstract  reason- 
ing concerning  quantity  or  number  ?  No.  Does  it  con* 
tain  any  experimental  reasoning  concerning  matter  of 
fact  and  existence  ?  No.  Commit  it  then  to  the  flames, 
for  it  can  contain  nothing  but  sophistry  and  illusion." 

VI. 

Hume  represents  thus,  indeed,  the  extreme  of  purely 
philosophical  skepticism  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
Others,  to  be  sure,  outside  of  the  ranks  of  the  philoso- 
phers, went  further  in  many  ways,  and  were  rebels  or 
scoffers  in  their  own  fashion,  far  more  aggressive  than  his. 
But  Hume's  thought  is  in  its  result  as  fruitful  as  in  its 
content  it  is  negative.  The  spirit,  you  see,  has  become 
anxious  to  know  its  own  nature.  After  all,  can  we  live 
by  merely  assuming  the  innate  ideas?  Can  even  Spi- 
noza's wisdom  save  us  from  doubt?  And  yet  this  doubt 
does  n't  mean  mere  waywardness.  It  means  longing  for 
self-consciousness.  And  in  the  last  third  of  the  century 
this  longing  took,  as  we  shall  next  time  learn,  new  and 
positive  forms.  The  inner  life,  to  be  sure,  has  appeared 
so  far  as  a  very  capricious  thing,  after  all.  Study  it  by 
mere  analysis  of  its  experiences,  as  Hume  did,  and  in  this 
its  capriciousness  it  will  seem  to  shrivel  to  nothing  under 
your  hands.  Where  you  expected  it  to  be  wealthiest,  it 
turns  out  to  be  poorest.  It  is  mere  sense,  mere  feeling, 
mere  sophistry  and  illusion.  But  is  this  the  end  ?  No, 
it  is  rather  but  the  beginning  of  a  new  and  a  higher 
philosophy.  The  spirit  is  more  than  mere  experience. 
Locke's  account  of  the  inner  life  is  only  half  the  truth. 
And  what  the  other  half  is,  Kant  and  his  successors  shall 
teach  us.  The  age  of  poetry  and  of  history  —  of  a  new 


THE  REDISCOVERY   OF  THE  INNER   LIFE.  99 

natural  science,  also,  yes,  even  this  our  own  century  — . 
shall  take  up  afresh  the  task  that  Hume  rejected  as  im- 
possible. The  revolutionary  period  shall  first  rediscover 
passion,  shall  produce  Goethe's  "  Faust,"  and  shall  regen- 
erate Europe.  Historical  research,  reviving,  shall  prove 
to  the  spirit  the  significance  of  his  own  earthly  past. 
Science,  entering  upon  new  realms,  shall  formulate  the 
idea  of  cosmical  evolution.  No  longer  Spinoza's  world, 
but  a  changing,  a  glowingly  passionate  and  tragic  world, 
of  moral  endeavor,  of  strife,  of  growth,  and  of  freedom, 
shall  be  conceived  by  men  ;  and  meanwhile,  in  Kant  and 
in  his  successors,  as  we  shall  find,  a  more  fitting  philoso- 
phy will  arise  to  formulate  with  all  of  Hume's  keen  dia- 
lectic, with  all  of  Locke's  love  of  human  nature,  and  still 
with  all  of  Spinoza's  reverence  for  an  absolute  rationality 
in  things,  something  of  the  significance  of  our  modern 
life. 

Remember,  however,  finally,  that  if  the  skepticism  of 
the  eighteenth  century  is  to  be  gotten  rid  of,  this  will  only 
be  by  transcending  it,  living  through  and  beyond  it,  not 
by  neglecting  or  by  simply  refuting  it,  from  without.  Phi- 
losophical insight,  however  partial,  is  never  to  be  refuted. 
You  can  transcend  it,  you  can  make  it  part  of  a  larger 
life,  but  it  always  remains  as  such  a  part.  The  genuine 
spirit  includes  all  that  was  true  and  earnest  in  the  doubt- 
ing spirit.  The  only  way  to  get  rid  of  a  philosophic 
doubt,  in  its  discouraging  aspect,  is  to  see  that,  such  as  it 
is,  it  already  implies  a  larger  truth.  The  great  spirit 
says  to  us,  like  Emerson's  "  Brahma,"  — 

"  They  reckon  ill  who  leave  me  out ; 

When  me  they  fly,  I  am  the  wings  ; 

I  am  the  doubter  and  the  doubt." 

And  this,  namely,  the  inevitableness  and  the  true  spir- 
ituality of  genuine  doubting,  is  the  great  lesson  that  the 
eighteenth  century,  in  its  transition  to  Kant,  teaches  us. 
It  is  a  lesson  well  to  be  remembered  in  our  own  day, 


100  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

when,  notwithstanding  the  vast  accomplishments  of  recent 
research,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  we,  too,  live  in  a  world 
of  doubt,  but  live  there  only  that  we  may  learn  to  con- 
quer and  possess  it,  all  its  doubts  and  its  certainties,  all 
its  truth.  In  doubt  we  come  to  see  our  illusion ;  the 
phantoms  of  the  night  of  thought  vanish ;  but  the  new 
light  comes.  The  old  world  dies,  but  only  to  rise  again 
to  the  immortality  of  a  higher  existence.  The  spirit  de- 
stroys its  former  creations,  shatters  its  idols,  and  laments 
their  loss.  But,  as  in  "  Faust,"  the  chorus  still  sings :  — 

"  Thou  hast  it  destroyed, 
The  beautiful  world, 
With  powerful  fist : 
In  ruin  't  is  hurled, 
By  the  blow  of  a  demigod  shattered  1 
The  scattered 

Fragments  into  the  Void  we  carry, 
Deploring 

The  beauty  perished  beyond  restoring. 
Mightier 

For  the  children  of  men, 
Brightlier 
Build  it  again, 

In  thine  own  bosom  build  it  anew ! 
Bid  the  new  career 
Commence, 
With  clearer  sense, 
And  the  new  songs  of  cheer 
Be  sung  thereto  ! " 

Such  a  building  anew  of  the  lost  universe  in  the  bosom  of 
the  human  spirit,  it  was  the  mission  of  Kant  to  begin. 


LECTURE  IV. 

KANT. 

"WE  saw  in  the  last  lecture  how  the  self-analysis  of  the 
eighteenth  century  inevitably  tended  towards  the  redis- 
covery of  passion,  and  finally  towards  the  great  revolu- 
tionary movement,  in  life  and  in  literature,  with  which 
the  century  closed.  But  we  also  found  that  the  same 
Lockean  tendency  was  bound  to  produce  a  philosophical 
skepticism  whereof  Hume  was  our  chief  example.  Hume 
stated  the  essence  of  Locke's  theory  with  an  almost  brutal 
simplicity  of  formulation.  >  We  know,  he  said,  impressions, 
which  come  to  us  through  sense,  and  ideas,  which  are  the 
copies  of  impressions.  About  some  ideas  we  can  reason. 
These  form  the  subject-matter  of  our  only  demonstrative 
science,  mathematics.  All  our  other  science  concerns 
matters  of  fact,  that  is,  recorded  impressions  of  our  expe- 
rience, with  such  rational  observations  as  we  can  make 
upon  them.  Does  the  inner  life  pretend  to  more  than 
this,  to  more  than  a  knowledge  of  impressions  and  ideas, 
—  then  what  is  this  pretense  but  sophistry  and  illusion  ? 
The  inner  life,  under  this  merciless  analysis,  shrivels  up, 
as  it  were,  into  a  mere  series  of  chance  experiences.  The 
sacred  faiths  of  humanity,  do  they  record  seen  and  felt 
matters  of  fact  ?  The  moral  law,  is  it  more  than  a  feeling 
in  the  mind  of  the  sympathetic  subject  ?  Hume  is  indeed 
merciless  ;  but  his  mercilessness  is,  after  all,  the  clear  in- 
sight of  a  reflective  man.  Bare  experience  of  the  Lockean 
sort  does  indeed  contain  no  such  supreme  rationality  as 
earlier  thinkers  had  found  there.  What  Hume  showed 


102  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

was  that  unless  there  is  more  in  experience  than  Locke's 
view  permitted  it  to  contain,  the  hope  of  any  transcendent 
knowledge  or  faith  for  humanity  is  indeed  gone.  That 
Hume  showed  this  is  his  great  merit,  for  hereby  he  led 
the  way  to  Kant. 

I. 

When  I  mention  the  name  of  Kant,  who  forms  our 
special  topic  to-day,  I  introduce  to  you  one  whose  thought 
arouses  more  suggestions  in  the  mind  of  a  philosophical 
student  than  cluster  about  any  other  modern  thinker. 
One  despairs  of  telling  you  all  or  any  great  part  of  what 
Kant  has  meant  to  one  in  the  course  of  a  number  of  years 
of  metaphysical  study ;  but  let  me  still  try  to  suggest  a 
little  of  Kant's  place  in  such  a  line  of  work.  One  hears 
of  Kant  early  in  one's  life  as  a  student  of  philosophy.  He 
is  said  to  be  hard,  perhaps  a  little  dangerous  (a  thing 
which  of  course  attracts  one  hugely  !).  He  is  said  to  be 
also  certainly  typical  of  German  speculation,  and  always 
worthy  of  one's  efforts  if  one  means  to  philosophize  at  all. 
Perhaps  one,  therefore,  first  tries  him  in  translation,  with 
a  sense  that,  even  if  one's  German  is  not  yet  free,  some- 
thing must  already  be  done  to  win  him.  The  "  Critique 
of  Pure  Reason,"  how  attractive  the  name  I  How  wise 
one  will  be  after  criticising  the  pure  reason  through  the 
reading  of  five  or  six  hundred  pages  of  close  print  I 
There  is  an  old  translation  of  Kant,  in  Bohn's  Library, 
by  a  certain  Meiklejohn.  One  begins  with  that.  The 
English  is  heavy,  not  to  say  shocking  ;  but  the  first  effect 
of  the  reading  is  soon  a  splendid  sense  of  power,  a  feeling 
of  the  exhaustiveness  of  the  treatment,  of  the  skill  and 
subtlety  and  fearlessness  of  this  Kant.  What  seems  to 
be  a  good  deal  of  the  book  —  not  the  chief  part,  indeed  — • 
one  can  even  fairly  grasp  at  the  first  reading.  In  fact, 
so  persuasive,  to  certain  minds,  is  the  general  external 
appearance  of  Kant's  method  of  work,  that  there  are  stu- 
dents who,  on  their  first  superficial  acquaintance  with 


KANT.  103 

him,  really  fancy  that  they  have  actually  comprehended 
the  whole  thing  at  one  stroke.  I  myself  have  heard  this 
feeling  expressed  by  diligent  young  readers,  who  have 
assured  me,  after  their  first  trial  of  the  "  Critique,"  that, 
as  they  supposed,  it  must  be  that  they  had  somehow  failed 
to  understand  Kant,  for  whereas  people  said  he  was  hard, 
they  themselves  had  n't  found  anything  very  difficult  in 
the  book  at  all.  To  their  great  alarm,  as  it  were,  they 
had  n't  even  been  puzzled.  Yet  when  such  persons  come 
to  read  Kant  a  second  time,  I  fear  that  they  usually  find 
themselves  considerably  puzzled ;  or  rather,  I  should  say 
that  I  hope  so.  Puzzle  is  a  sensation  that  soon  comes, 
when  one  begins  to  examine  Kant  more  cautiously  and 
worthily.  The  first  superficial  joy  in  his  power,  in  his 
skill,  in  his  subtlety,  in  his  fearlessness,  fades  away.  One 
sees  his  actual  doctrine  looming  afar  off,  a  mountain  yet 
to  be  climbed.  On  nearer  approach,  one  finds  the  moun- 
tain well  wooded ;  and  the  woods  have  thick  underbrush. 
The  paths  lose  themselves  in  the  dark  valleys,  leading 
this  way  and  that,  with  most  contradictory  windings. 
Kant  is  a  pedantic  creature  after  all,  one  says.  He  loves 
hard  words.  He  takes  a  mass  of  them,  —  as  one  of 
his  critics  fiercely  says,  he  takes  a  mass  of  Latin  terms 
ending  in  tion,  and  translates  them  into  so  many  equiva- 
lent vernacular  terms,  ending  in  the  German  in  heit  and 
kcit,  and  he  calls  this  sort  of  thing  philosophy  !  Getting 
such  things  through  the  medium  of  an  English  transla- 
tion does  n't  improve  them.  One  begins  to  anathematize 
the  poor  translator,  Meiklejohn,  in  fear  lest  one  should 
blaspheme  instead  the  sacred  name  of  the  immortal  Kant. 
One  finally  concludes  that  this  is  a  book  full  of  great 
insights  and  of  noble  passages,  but  that  the  real  connec- 
tions are  n't  to  be  made  out  until  one  shall  have  fought 
the  good  fight  in  German.  And  so  one  drops  the  subject 
until  one's  German  shall  be  free. 

That  happy  time  comes.     One  has  first  read  Schopen« 


104  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

hauer,  whose  German,  to  use  a  comparison  of  Jean  Paul 
Kichter's,  is  as  limpid  as  a  mountain  lake  that  lies  be- 
neath gloomy  cliffs,  under  a  clear  and  frosty  sky.  One 
has  oven  plunged  down  the  tumultuous  streams  of  Fichte's 
eloquence,  where  the  frail  bark  of  a  student's  understand- 
ing is  indeed  occasionally  rather  near  to  destruction,  but 
whence  a  man  still  usually  escapes  with  his  wits.  Now  it 
is  time  to  return  to  Kant.  One  hereupon  falls  upon  the 
"  Critique  "  with  new  zest,  and  finds  that,  as  reading  goes 
in  a  studious  but  rather  busy  and  distracted  life,  one  can 
at  length  read  the  book  through  in  about  three  years,  and 
can  feel  that  thereafter  he  might  do  well  to  begin  and  read 
it  again.  After  doing  so,  one  lays  it  aside  for  a  spell, 
and  so  returns  afresh,  from  year  to  year,  for  a  longer  or 
shorter  season,  to  the  fascinating  but  baffling  task.  ID 
Germany,  where  there  has  been  a  revival  of  interest  in 
Kant,  during  the  past  twenty  years,  reading  the  "  Cri* 
tique  "  has  come  to  take  rank,  so  to  speak,  as  one  of  the 
liberal  professions.  There  are  learned  men  who,  in  all 
appearance,  do  nothing  else.  The  habit  is  dangerously 
fascinating.  The  Kant  devotee  never  knows  when  to 
stop.  When  I  studied  in  Germany  as  a  young  college 
graduate,  some  fifteen  years  ago,  it  was  my  fortune  to 
meet  one  of  the  most  learned  and  many-sided  of  the  new 
philosophical  doctors  of  the  day,  who  was  just  then  pre- 
paring for  a  docentship.  He  was  a  man  who  promised, 
as  one  might  say,  almost  everything  ;  who  wrote  and  pub- 
lished essays  of  remarkable  breadth  and  skill,  and  who 
was  especially  noticeable  for  his  wide  range  of  work. 
Some  years  later,  it  unhappily  occurred  to  him  to  begin 
printing  a  commentary  on  Kant's  "  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason."  He  planned  the  commentary  for  completion  in 
four  volumes  octavo.  Of  these  four  he  published,  not 
long  afterwards,  the  first,  a  volume  of  several  hundred 
large  pages,  wherein  he  deals  —  with  Kant's  introduc- 
tory chapter.  Since  then  my  former  acquaintance  is  lost 


KANT.  105 

The  final  volumes  of  the  commentary  have  never  ap- 
peared, although  he  has  now  been  at  work  upon  them 
more  than  ten  years.  How  many  volumes  will  really  be 
needed  to  complete  the  task,  only  the  "  destroyer  of  de- 
lights and  terminator  of  felicities,"  whom  the  Arabian 
Nights'  tales  always  love  to  mention  as  they  close,  to  wit, 
Death  himself,  can  ever  determine.  The  thorough  student 
of  Kant  is,  so  to  speak,  a  Tannhauser,  close  shut  in  his 
Venusberg.  You  hunt  for  him  fruitlesssly  in  all  the  outer 
world.  Worse  than  Tannhauser  he  is,  for  you  can  never 
get  him  out.  Pilgrims'  choruses  chant,  and  waiting  Eliza- 
beths mourn  for  him,  in  vain.  As  for  me,  I,  as  you  per- 
ceive, am  no  reader  of  Kant,  in  the  strict  sense,  at  all.  I 
won  a  doctor's  degree,  years  since,  in  part  by  writing  a 
course  of  lecturer  upon  the  "  Critique."  I  have  since 
come  to  see  that  those  lectures  were  founded  upon  a  seri- 
ous, I  might  say  an  entire,  misinterpretation  of  Kant's 
meaning.  Since  then  I  have  repented,  as  you  also  ob- 
serve, of  this  misinterpretation,  and,  as  I  might  add,  of 
several  others.  I  love  still  to  lecture  to  my  college  classes 
on  Kant.  I  think  that  possibly  I  know  a  little  about 
him.  But  then,  after  all,  Kant,  you  see,  is  Kant ;  and 
the  Lord  made  him,  and  many  other  wondrous  works  be- 
sides ;  and  it  takes  time  to  find  such  things  out. 

You  will  understand  therefore,  at  once,  that  I  can  have 
no  intention  of  making  clear,  within  the  limits  of  a  single 
lecture,  a  doctrine  so  subtle  and  involved  as  this.  But 
then  the  justification  of  my  undertaking  in  these  lectures 
is  wholly  that  I  attempt,  not  to  describe  the  philosophers 
and  their  opinions  as  the  monuments  of  technical  skill  and 
of  exhaustive  research  which  they  are,  but  to  set  forth  to 
you  something  of  the  temperament  which  they  embody, 
Kant  shall  be  for  us  a  character  in  a  story,  an  attitude 
towards  the  spiritual  concerns  of  humanity.  As  such 
you  want  to  know  him ;  as  such  only  can  I  attempt  here 
to  describe  him. 


106  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

II. 

The  man  Kant  is  an  old  subject  for  literary  portraiture. 
It  is  hard  to  say  anything  in  the  least  new  about  him. 
He  was  born  in  1724,  in  the  city  of  Konigsberg,  in  the 
province  of  East  Prussia,  and  never  once  in  his  life  trav- 
eled beyond  that  province.  His  family  was  poor ;  his 
father  was  of  Scotch  descent,  and  was  a  saddler,  and  in 
religion  a  pietist.  Both  Kant's  parents  lived  a  narrow 
and  glowing  religious  life,  cheerful,  harmonious,  and,  in  a 
worldly  sense,  dispassionate.  At  school  Kant  attracted 
such  attention  that  a  university  course  of  study  followed, 
in  Konigsberg,  of  course,  and  this  led  him  to  an  academic 
career.  At  the  outset  of  his  literary  work  Kant  is  a  curi- 
ous mixture  of  the  pedant,  the  many-sided  student,  the 
young  man  of  literary  skill,  and  the  independent  investi- 
gator. His  earliest  essay  was  in  philosophical  physics, 
and  was  in  more  senses  than  one  a  failure.  In  1755,  he 
published,  however,  a  remarkable  paper  on  the  "  General 
Natural  History  and  Theory  of  the  Heavens,"  wherein  he 
anticipated  the  essential  features  of  the  nebular  hypothe- 
sis which  Laplace  afterwards  developed.  Up  to  this 
time  he  had  been  a  private  tutor.  Thenceforth  he  lec- 
tured as  privat-docent  at  the  university  until  his  appoint- 
ment as  professor  in  1770.  Promotion,  as  one  sees,  was 
thereabouts  slow,  and  Kant  was  perhaps  at  first  over- 
looked by  higher  officials,  whom  he  never  sought  to 
please.  During  these  earlier  years  he  was  a  man  of 
considerable  literary  skill,  but  in  philosophy  was  still 
under  the  influence  of  the  reigning  dogmatic  school. 
The  poet  Herder,  who  heard  him  as  decent,  speaks  very 
highly  of  his  power  in  those  days  as  a  lecturer.  Of  Kant 
in  his  young  prime  we  have  a  portrait,  showing  him 
at  the  age  of  forty-four.  More  common  is  the  portrait 
taken  much  later  in  life.  Both  show  us  the  spare,  small, 
insignificant-appearing  man.  He  was  of  frail  health,  but 


KANT.  107 

seldom  or  never  ill.  His  height  was  barely  beyond  five 
feet;  as  he  grew  older  he  became  more  and  more  an 
almost  fleshless  but  very  cheerful  shadow  of  a  man,  all 
mind  and  no  body,  genial,  gossiping,  a  lover  of  a  small 
but  very  clever  circle  of  friends,  a  great  reader  of  books 
of  travel,  a  passionate  student,  strange  to  say,  of  the  man- 
ners and  customs  of  various  and  distant  lands  and  peoples, 
topics  upon  which  he  loved  to  lecture.  His  bachelor  life 
grew,  meanwhile,  more  and  more  methodical.  As  he  grew 
older,  thought  absorbed  him  more  and  more.  For  more 
than  a  decade,  namely,  from  1770  to  1781,  he  published 
very  little,  and  meditated  solely  his  "  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason,"  gladly  free,  as  he  once  says,  from  the  obligation 
of  defending  early  and  hastily  written  essays  in  philoso- 
phy. Now  he  became  indeed  an  original  thinker.  His 
loneliness  of  thought  grew  almost  oppressive.  To  his 
friends  he  apparently  said  only  a  little  of  the  new  doc- 
trine that  was  forming  in  his  mind.  His  lectures  became 
less  eloquent ;  his  inner  life  grew  ever  deeper,  stiller,  — 
not  melancholy,  but  hidden  away,  involved,  problematic. 
Henceforth,  moreover,  his  style  gravely  suffers.  The 
genial  soul  shows  itself  again  and  again  in  the  great 
"  Critique,"  in  chance  figures,  in  brilliant  but  too  brief 
passages.  Yet  on  the  whole  Kant's  writing  is  henceforth 
burdened,  as  it  were,  with  the  weight  of  his  whole  new 
world.  His  sentences  groan  beneath  their  treasures.  He 
works  beneath  the  earth,  in  the  mines  of  humanity's  gold.1 
Great  thoughts  glitter  in  the  rich  quartz  of  his  medita- 
tion, but  only  with  toil  and  suffering  is  this  gold  to  be 
extracted.  From  the  first  issue  of  the  "  Critique  "  m°n 

1  In  a  remarkable  note,  published  in  Benno  Erdnmnn's  edition  or 
Kant's  Reflexioiien  (vol.  ii.  p.  6),  Kant  himself  says,  of  his  own  style, 
"  Es  scheint  zwar  nichts  geschmackswidriger  zu  sein  als  die  Metaphy- 
sik,  aber  die  Zierrate  die  an  der  Schonheit  glanzen,  lagen  erstlich  in 
dunkeln  Griiften,  wenigstens  sah  man  sie  zuerst  durch  die  iiustere 
Werkstatt  des  Kunstlers." 


108  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

complained  of  Kant's  obscurity ;  years  later  Herder  la- 
mented bitterly  the  lost  instructor  of  his  youth,  the  man 
whom  he  used  to  be  able  to  comprehend,  but  of  whom 
now  he  could  make  almost  nothing,  and  whose  doctrine 
he  sternly  opposed.  The  first  impression  that  the  great 
"  Critique "  produced  was  of  wonder  and  of  a  sort  of 
puzzled  dread.  Some  said,  "  This  man  has  destroyed  all 
faith.  He  doubts  everything.  It  is  a  dangerous  book ; 
it  is  terrible."  Others  said,  "This  is  Berkeley's  ideal- 
ism over  again."  Many  said,  "  Whatever  it  is,  it  is 
quite  unreadable."  But  erelong  the  thought  came  home 
to  people  that  all  this  was  not  only  novel,  but  vastly  en- 
lightening. The  universities  took  up  the  book.  The 
great  literary  men  read  it.  Schiller  himself  was  in  many 
respects  almost  revolutionized  by  it,  and  by  the  Kantian 
works  that  followed  it.  The  age  of  the  revolution  was 
ripe  for  it.  Young  men  became  fascinated  by  it,  and 
within  twenty-five  years  the  "  Critique  "  had  converted  a 
people  decidedly  unproductive  in  philosophy  into  the  typi- 
cally metaphysical  nation  of  Europe,  so  that,  as  Jean 
Paul  said,  while  God  had  given  to  the  French  the  land 
and  to  the  English  the  sea,  he  had  granted  to  the  Ger- 
mans the  empire  of  the  air. 

Meanwhile,  Kant,  gradually  wasting  away  in  body,  ate 
his  one  meal  daily,  walked  over  his  regular  path  every 
afternoon,  lectured  genially  but  intricately  to  his  classes, 
and  wrote  book  after  book  until  some  years  later  than 
1790.  Old  age  was  now  approaching  fast.  This  frail 
body  could  not  very  well  endure  the  coming  enemy.  Kant 
grew  less  productive  and  more  methodical.  There  is  a 
well-known  passage  by  Heine,1  wherein  this  daily  life  of 
Kant  is  sketched :  — 

"  The  life  of  Immanuel  Kant,"  says  Heine,  "  is  hard  to 
describe ;  he  had  indeed  neither  life  nor  history  in  the 

1  Quoted,  also,  by  Professor  Edward  Caird,  in  his  Philosophy  oj 
Immanuel  Kant,  2d  ed.  vol.  i.  p.  63. 


KANT.  109 

proper  sense  of  the  words.  He  lived  an  abstract,  me- 
chanical, old -bachelor  existence,  in  a  quiet,  remote  street 
of  Kb'nigsberg,  an  old  city  at  the  northeastern  boundary 
of  Germany.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  great  cathedral- 
clock  of  that  city  accomplished  its  day's  work  in  a  less 
passionate  and  more  regular  way  than  its  countryman, 
Immanuel  Kant.  Rising  from  bed,  coffee-drinking,  writ- 
ing, lecturing,  eating,  walking,  everything  had  its  fixed 
time ;  and  the  neighbors  knew  that  it  must  be  exactly 
half  past  four  when  they  saw  Professor  Kant,  in  his  gray 
coat,  with  his  cane  in  his  hand,  step  out  of  his  house-door, 
and  move  towards  the  little  lime-tree  avenue,  which  is 
named,  after  him,  the  Philosopher's  Walk.  Eight  times 
he  walked  up  and  down  that  walk  at  every  season  of  the 
year,  and  when  the  weather  was  bad,  or  the  gray  clouds 
threatened  rain,  his  servant,  old  Lampe,  was  seen  anx- 
iously following  him  with  a  large  umbrella  under  his 
arm,  like  an  image  of  Providence. 

"  Strange  contrast  between  the  outer  life  of  the  man 
and  his  world-destroying  thought.  Of  a  truth,  if  the  citi- 
zens of  Konigsberg  had  had  any  inkling  of  the  meaning 
of  that  thought,  they  would  have  shuddered  before  him 
as  before  an  executioner.  But  the  good  people  saw  no- 
thing in  him  but  a  professor  of  philosophy,  and  when  he 
passed  at  the  appointed  hour,  they  gave  him  friendly 
greetings  —  and  set  their  watches." 

III. 

To  this  characterization  of  Heine's,  which  has  become 
almost  classic,  it  is  hard  to  add  anything  besides  what 
every  reader  of  literary  gossip  also  knows,  unless  one 
enters  into  details  that  would  detain  us  here  too  long. 
Still,  we  must  go  yet  a  little  farther.  This  odd  and 
gentle  little  man  was,  as  you  already  see,  a  singular  com- 
bination of  the  keen-witted  analyst  and  the  humane  lover 
of  all  things  human.  Give  him  an  old  problem,  or  a 


110  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

well-known  abstract  conception,  such  as  the  idea  of  wis- 
dom or  of  justice,  and  he  would  quickly  show  you  his 
analytic  skill  by  mentioning  a  long  series  of  distinctions, 
of  aspects,  of  possible  ways  of  defining  or  of  stating  the 
thing,  —  so  long  a  series,  and  often  so  dry,  that  you  would 
at  first  be  likely  to  suspect  him  of  genuine  pedantry. 
And  yet  this  seeming  pedant  —  what  a  lover  he  is  of 
books  of  travel,  of  descriptions  of  live  men,  and  of  con- 
crete affairs  I  He  has  indeed  never  traveled  beyond  his 
simple  and  quiet  little  province ;  but  yet,  as  we  just  saw, 
he  loves  to  lecture,  and  with  a  wide  knowledge,  too,  upou 
geography  and  upon  anthropology.  Physical  science  also, 
after  the  fashions  of  his  day,  he  knows  very  fairly.  In 
that  early  essay  he  has  anticipated  Laplace's  nebular 
hypothesis.  Moreover,  he  has  published  a  long  paper  on 
the  sentiments  of  the  sublime  and  beautiful.  When  he 
speculates,  he  shows  himself  as  many-sided  as  he  is  keen. 
His  systematic  plans  are  vast.  When,  in  his  old  age,  he 
has  published  half  a  dozen  important  and  varied  treatises 
upon  different  and  fundamental  departments  of  philoso- 
phy, he  still  laments  the  fragmentariness  of  his  work,  and 
still  promises  himself  a  chance  to  complete  his  system  by 
one  great  book.  Before  he  can  do  much  upon  this,  old 
age  takes  away  first  his  noble  powers  of  mind,  and  then 
his  life.  This  life  itself  had  been  as  beautiful  in  its  sim- 
ple humanity  as  it  had  been  rigid  in  its  routine.  Kant 
was  above  all  a  good  man,  strictly  honorable,  unalterably 
loyal  to  his  tasks,  pleasant  and  even  charming  to  his  few 
near  friends,  and  in  his  fashion  very  deeply  pious.  As 
for  the  form  of  his  piety,  you  must  know  what  that  was 
before  you  can  be  prepared  for  his  reflective  doctrines. 

Some  people,  including,  for  instance,  Heine  himself, 
have  imagined  that  there  were,  in  Kant's  religious  life, 
two  or  even  three  distinct  periods,  —  an  early  period,  say, 
of  faith;  then  a  revolutionary  and  destructive  period, 
when,  in  a  sort  of  secret  but  none  the  less  Titanic  rebel* 


KANT.  Ill 

Housness,  this  terrible  professor  revolted  against  theology, 
and  wrote  books  that  make  an  end  once  for  all  of  every 
positive  religious  belief ;  then,  finally,  a  third  period  of 
cowardly,  or  at  all  events  of  weakly  timid,  withdrawal  from 
conflict,  when  Kant,  the  old  man,  fearing  the  government, 
and  perhaps  taking  compassion  upon  common  folk,  recon- 
structed, in  an  inconsistent  fashion,  the  beliefs  that  his 
"  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  "  had  shattered,  and  so  taught 
God,  freedom,  and  immortality,  solely  for  the  sake  of  his 
own  peace.  Upon  what  facts  this  disgraceful  myth  about 
Kant's  inconsistency  in  his  old  age  was  founded,  I  will 
not  pause  to  explain  here.  You  will  soon  see  in  what 
sense  his  great  "Critique"  was  destructive.  You  will 
also  soon  see  in  what  sense  his  later  writings  were  con- 
structive as  to  religious  faith.  I  mention,  however,  the 
often-repeated  tale  just  to  warn  you  that  it  is  a  myth, 
and  that  Kant's  attitude  towards  the  affairs  of  the  reli- 
gious consciousness  changed  very  little  at  any  time,  and 
not  at  all  after  once  the  critical  doctrine  was  in  his  hands. 
But  as  to  the  real  form  of  his  piety,  it  was  never  akin 
to  Spinoza's  mysticism  ;  it  belonged  rather  to  that  other, 
to  that  active  form  of  the  religious  consciousness,  of 
which  I  spoke,  by  way  of  contrast,  when  I  was  describ- 
ing Spinoza  to  you.  And  yet  there  was  something  so 
simple  and  direct  about  Kant's  attitude  towards  divine 
things  that  when  he  talks  of  God  to  you,  you  feel  in  as 
direct  a  relation  with  one  important  fact  of  the  eternal 
world  as,  in  Spinoza's  case,  you  felt  in  relation  to  another 
fact.  Spinoza  says  to  you  :  Look  upon  the  seeming  chaos 
of  nature.  For  sense  it  is  a  disheartening  whirlwind  of 
vain  and  fragmentary  facts ;  yet  for  reason  an  infinite 
law  dwells  in  it.  This  law  is  supreme,  all-compelling. 
It  is  the  law  of  the  divine  mind,  which  reveals  one  attri- 
bute of  God's  substance,  and  of  which  your  mind  is  a 
part.  In  the  presence  of  this  infinite  majesty  are  you 
every  moment.  Enter  consciously  into  it,  and  dwell  there, 


112  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

and  to  you,  as  wise  man,  God's  infinite  perfection  will  be 
present  as  a  religious  consolation,  and  you  will  be  unalter- 
ably at  peace.  Of  such  mystical  comfort  Kant  knows 
nothing.  He  hates  mysticism  with  a  shrewd  and  sternly 
analytical  keenness  of  critical  ill-will,  suggestive,  in  his 
.  _  c.  case,  of  the  attitude  of  the  very  deliberate  and  economical 
old  bachelor,  who  dreads  nothing  more  than  falling  in 
love,  or  than  wasting  his  hoarded  energies  upon  any 
,  similar  vain  and  expensive  sentimentalities.  Mysticism 
and  what  he  would  call  lovers'  Narxhei^  are,  in  Kant's 


simple  and  honest  mind,  closely  associated  and  mercilessly 
scorned.  They  are  both  called  by  him  by  his  favorite 
term  of  reproach.  They  are  Schwarmerei,  vain  and 
vague  enthusiasm,  mere  fancy,  by  gazing  fed.  Kant, 
this  genial  and  bloodless  old  hero  of  contemplation,  wast- 
ing away  in  his  cheerful  asceticism,  reverences,  as  every- 
body knows,  duty  and  the  stars,  but  has  no  time  for  ro- 
mance. The  God  whom  he  worships  is  indeed  stern  and 
majestic,  cares  not  even  to  have  you  demonstrate  his  ex- 
istence, and  eludes  the  cleverness  of  your  theoretic  reason 
as  loftily  as  he  rejects  the  loverlike  importunities  of  your 
weak  and  sentimental  moments.  He  reveals  himself, 
indeed,  but  to  your  conscience. 

Conscience,  for  the  first,  shows  you  the  moral  law,  — 
shows  it  as  something  overwhelmingly  rational,  absolute, 
universal,  indifferent  to  your  private  wishes,  independent 
of  your  present  happiness,  sublime  as  the  heavens  are, 
but  as  directly  known  to  you  as  is  the  very  existence  of 
your  will  and  of  your  reason.  Conscience  shows  you  this 
absolute  law,  and  says  sternly,  unwaveringly,  uncompro- 
misingly, "  Do  thy  duty."  And  because  conscience  shows 
you  this,  it  demands  of  you  that  you  labor  henceforth  and 
forever  as  if  you  were  an  instrument,  a  minister,  of  a 
divine  law  that  moves  in  all  things.  It  orders  you,  then, 
to  live  as  if  God  were  present  here  all  about  you  in  this 
world  of  sense.  He  is  not  to  be  seen  here,  indeed,  with 


KANT.  113 

the  eye  of  sense.  In  vain,  for  the  critical  Kant  of  the 
days  after  1780,  does  even  weak  theoretic  reason  try  to 
prove  to  our  poor  wits  that  he  is  here.  Sense  and  speca- 
lation  alike  fail  you.  But  none  the  less  must  you  act  as 
if  God  were  your  constant  and  visible  companion,  as  if 
the  moral  law,  which  you  must  regard  as  his  only  direct 
revelation,  were  spoken  in  your  ear  by  him  as  by  your 
next  friend  at  this  moment.  And  to  know  that  thus  you 
ought  to  act,  that  thus  you  ought  to  live,  to  wit,  as  if  the 
unsearchable  God  whom  the  heavens  cannot  contain  were 
as  familiar  to  you  as  your  daily  walk,  as  visible  to  you  as 
the  town-clock,  —  to  know  this  is  to  do  what  Kant  calls 
postulating  God's  existence.  It  isn't  sentimental  faith 
that  you  have  in  God.  You  don't  believe  in  him  because 
you  long  to,  or  because  life  would  be  blank  if  you  did  n't, 
or  because  you  fear  the  charge  of  atheism.  You  believe 
in  God  in  one  sense  and  for  one  reason  only,  —  because  a 
man  sure  of  his  duty  is  sure  that  the  right  ought  to  win, 
that  in  the  sense-world  it  does  n't  win,  and  that  in  the 
universe  it  can  win  only  if  God  is  at  the  helm,  —  God 
as  the  absolute  and  all-powerful  well-wisher  of  the  whole 
visible  and  invisible  world-order.  This  notion  of  God's 
existence,  a  mere  hypothesis  to  your  theoretic  speculation, 
is  for  your  active  consciousness  just  in  such  sense  a  cer- 
tainty as  you  propose  to  behave  as  if  it  were  one. 

For  the  rest,  Kant,  in  his  later  years,  has  no  hope  of 
even  illustrating  anything  about  God's  providence  by 
appealing,  as  so  many  do,  to  our  experience  of  justice  in 
this  world,  or  by  any  other  theoretical  means.  Kant 
is  no  optimist,  just  as  he  is  no  sentimentalist,  about  the 
world  of  experience.  The  divine  justice  does  n't  very  ob- 
viously show  itself  here  below.  Kant  sees  much  evil  all 
about  him  ;  condemns,  in  one  passage,  the  people  who  find 
our  present  life  happy ;  declares  that  not  one  of  us  would 
willingly  lead  his  own  life  over  again,  if  he  had  the  free 
choice  and  were  not  bound  by  some  sort  of  duty  to  do 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

so ;  in  short,  speaks  almost  cynically  of  those  earthly  joys 
whereof,  with  all  his  cheerhujsif  and  his  open-heartedness, 
he  tasted  so  little.  The  few  good  things  of  life  are  such 
things  as  healthy  friendships  and  successful  toils,  the 
sober  routine  of  business,  of  conversation,  and  of  think- 
ing. And  yet  even  these  are  all  of  them  only  relatively 
good.  The  only  absolutely  good  thing  in  our  world  is  a 
good  will,  in  a  being  who  does  his  duty.  Thus,  then,  our 
sense-world,  if  coldly  cheerful  for  the  brave  and  resolute, 
is  still  no  place  of  rewards  ;  nor  does  God's  benevolence 
manifest  itself  except  to  the  moral  consciousness.  But 
there,  indeed,  in  our  conscience,  despite  all  the  mystery, 
we  know  the  mind  of  God.  This  is  what  he  wants  of  us, 
namely,  our  duty.  And  that  he  wants  this,  and  will  see 
to  the  absolute  success  of  the  right,  this  is  the  whole  con- 
tent of  our  moral  faith. 

Such  was  Kant's  piety.  It  has  been  much  misunder- 
stood. Especially  are  people  at  fault  in  fancying  it  a  late 
thing  in  Kant's  life,  a  product  of  his  old  age.  He  ex- 
presses substantially  the  same  thoughts  as  early  as  1766, 
when  he  is  still  hoping  for  theoretical  proofs  of  God's 
existence.  Such  proofs,  he  says,  whether  we  ever  get 
them  or  no,  we  do  not  need.  The  moral  consciousness 
reveals  God  in  its  own  way.  Early,  then,  Kant  had 
reached  his  main  assurance.  Very  late  in  his  career  he 
declares,  in  one  passage,  that  this  assurance  is  no  matter 
of  subtle  philosophy  at  all.  "  The  progress  of  metaphy- 
sics in  theology  is,"  he  observas,  "  the  easiest  "  [and  there- 
fore the  least]  "  of  all "  her  achievements,  and,  "  although 
concerned  with  the  remote  above  sense,  is  not  itself  at  all 
recondite,  but  is  as  clear  to  common  sense  as  to  the  phi- 
losophers, so  much  so,  in  fact,  that  the  thinkers  have  here 
to  find  their  way  by  the  very  light  of  common  sense,  lest 
they  be  lost  in  the  mazes  of  the  recondite." 

Notice  here,  if  you  will,  at  once  the  novel  aspect  of 
Kant's  insight,  and  at  the  same  time  the  simplicity  and 


KANT.  115 

familiarity  of  the  thing.  Novel  is  his  insight  into  the 
relations  of  religion  and  of  reason,  —  novel,  namely,  just  in 
so  far  as  it  is  a  philosophical  insight.  The  seventeenth 
century  had  regarded  God  as  first  of  all  an  object  of 
theory,  as  the  demonstrable  source  and  principle  of  the 
visible  world,  and  so  as  a  being  whose  existence  we  had  to 
accept,  as  it  were,  submissively,  helplessly,  because  of  the 
dogmas  of  reason.  To  this  dogmatic  faith  in  reason, 
skepticism  had  later  opposed  its  cruel  objections.  And 
now  comes  Kant,  whom  a  long  experience  of  problems 
makes  skeptical  above  all  men,  cautious,  critical,  re- 
signed to  doubts,  a  hater  of  mystical  faith,  a  destroyer  of 
dogmas;  and  yet  he  gives  us  back  our  faith,  not  as  a 
dogma,  but  as  an  active  postulate,  as  a  free  spiritual  con- 
struction, as  a  determination  to  live  in  the  presence  of  the 
unseen  and  eternal.  New  are  some  of  his  philosophic 
doubts ;  new  in  an  uncommon  sense  will  be  his  fashions 
of  theorizing  in  philosophy  ;  old  is  his  appeal  to  that 
courage  and  that  loyalty  upon  which  our  very  civilization 
is  founded.  For,  I  insist,  this  notion  of  Kant's  about  the 
spiritual  world,  this  appeal,  not  to  sentiment,  but  to  con- 
science as  the  warrant  of  faith,  is  it  not  indeed  the  very 
soul  of  all  instinctive  civilization?  Consider  this  same 
fashion  of  looking  not  only  at  the  problems  about  God,  but 
at  the  affairs  of  worldly  experience.  Consider  the  attitude 
of  a  soldier  going  into  battle  against  a  foe  whom  he  knows 
to  be  nearly  his  match  in  force  and  arms.  He  possesses, 
if  he  is  a  brave  man,  some  sort  of  confidence  that  he  will 
win.  Well,  it  is  much  like  Kant's  faith  in  God.  In  what 
is  this  confidence  founded  ?  In  experience  ?  No,  this  bat- 
tle has  n't  yet  been  fought,  so  that  experience  is  not  his 
guide  as  to  this  fight,  and,  as  to  the  past,  any  old  soldier 
is  likely  to  know  from  experience  a  good  deal  about 
defeat,  as  well  as  about  victory,  perhaps  even  more  of  lost 
than  of  won  battles.  Does  he  know,  then,  that  he  will 
win  by  any  rational  intuition?  Is  it  an  innate  idea  in 


116  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

him  that  he  is  going  to  win  ?  No ;  to  say  so  would  be 
mere  trifling.  Neither  intuition  nor  experience  assures 
him  of  victory.  No  merely  sentimental  faith  is  this  his 
assurance ;  no  datum  is  it  of  sense.  His  belief  that  he 
will  win  is  identical  with  his  active,  manly  resolve  that 
he  is  minded  to  win,  that  his  teeth  are  set  to  win,  that 
this  sword  is  sharpened,  that  this  bayonet  has  been 
pointed,  that  this  bullet  will  soon  be  winged,  with  the 
determination  of  victory.  Each  army  knows  that,  other 
things  equal,  the  force  which  is  thus  most  minded  to  win 
is  the  force  destined  to  conquer,  that  here  is  a  case  where 
faith  can  create  its  own  object,  that  the  unseen  victory 
will  be  fashioned  precisely  by  and  for  the  side  which  most 
fully  takes  hold  of  that  unseen,  and  which  actively  creates 
what  it  believes  in.  Well,  then,  there  is  in  active  life 
this  way  of  vindicating  your  faith.  It  is  by  creating  the 
very  idea  of  the  world  wherein  your  faith  is  to  come  true. 
You  all  know,  furthermore,  to  take  an  example  from 
everyday  life,  how  it  is  largely  our  own  choice  whether 
our  lives,  in  certain  aspects  of  them,  say  in  their  cares 
and  responsibilities,  their  routine  and  their  disappoint- 
ments, are  tolerable  or  not.  Evil  besets  us,  pain  op- 
presses us,  chagrin  or  calamity  overwhelms  us.  We  cry 
out  bitterly,  "  Prove  to  me  that  such  a  life  is  good.  Ex- 
perience does  n't  show  it  to  be  good.  And  as  for  faith, 
as  for  intuitive  trust  that  it  is  good,  this  I  have  lost.  My 
noble  sentiments  fade  out ;  my  natural  love  of  life  for- 
sakes me.  Is  it  all  tolerable  ?  Prove  that  to  me."  The 
answer  of  the  active  temperament,  the  answer  which 
seems  so  stern  to  us  in  our  moments  of  weakness  and 
cowardice,  so  inspiring  to  us  in  our  moments  of  spiritual 
dignity  and  courage,  is  the  answer :  "  Your  world  is  toler- 
able, yes,  is  even  glorious,  if,  and  only  if,  you  actively  make 
it  so.  Its  spirituality  is  your  own  creation,  or  else  is 
nothing.  Awake,  arise,  be  willing,  endure,  struggle,  defy 
evil,  cleave  to  good,  strive,  be  strenuous,  be  devoted,  throw 


KANT.  117 

into  the  face  of  evil  and  depression  your  brave  cry  of  ha- 
tred and  of  resistance,  and  then  this  dark  universe  of  des- 
tiny will  glow  with  a  divine  light.  Then  you  will  com- 
mune with  the  eternal.  For  you  have  no  relations  with 
the  eternal  world  save  such  as  you  make  for  yourself." 
My  illustrations  are  here  inadequate  to  the  full  expression 
of  Kant's  notion  of  the  postulate,  but  that  is  because  of 
the  difference  of  the  objects  treated. 

In  describing  thus  the  answer  of  spiritual  courage  to 
our  despair,  I  am,  as  you  see,  once  more  stating  a  mood, 
an  attitude  of  life.  You  see  all  along  the  contrast 
between  this  way  of  viewing  the  deepest  truths  and  the 
way  which  Spinoza  suggested  to  us.  I  am  not  here  con- 
cerned with  the  final  rights  of  the  controversy.  I  am 
only  trying  to  introduce  you  to  Kant's  notion  of  our  rela- 
tion to  spiritual  truth ;  and  Kant's  piety,  Kant's  attitude 
towards  religious  problems,  Kant's  notion  of  faith  in  God, 
is  in  essence  this  heroic  notion.  He  conceives  here,  as 
later  in  the  theoretical  part  of  his  philosophy,  that  truth, 
so  far  as  we  mortals  can  know  it,  is  neither  from  innate 
ideas,  nor  from  our  experience.  It  comes  to  us  because 
we  make  it.  This  determination  of  ours  it  is  that  seizes 
hold  upon  God,  then,  just  as  the  courage  of  the  manly  soul 
makes  life  good,  introduces  into  life  something  that  is 
there  only  for  the  activity  of  the  hero,  finds  God  because 
the  soul  has  wrestled  for  his  blessing,  and  then  has  found 
after  all  that  the  wrestling  is  the  blessing.  God  is  with 
us  only  because  we  choose  to  serve  our  ideal  of  him  as  if 
he  were  present  to  our  senses.  His  kingdom  exists 
because  we  are  resolved  that,  so  far  as  in  us  lies,  it  shall 
come.  In  this  sign  we  conquer.  This  is  the  victory  that 
overcometh  the  world,  not  our  intuition,  not  our  sentimen- 
tal faith,  but  our  live,  our  moral,  our  creative  faith. 

You  see  thus  more  fully  how  highly  common-sense  is 
this  core  of  Kant's  doctrine.  This  is,  if  you  will,  the  wis- 
dom of  modern  practical  men  of  high  mind  everywhere. 


118  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

"  I  don't  know  much  about  God  himself,  or  about  the 
world,"  says  such  an  one,  "  but  I  can  know  something  of 
my  own  nature,  and  I  propose  to  behave  as  if  God  were 
now  looking  at  me."  Well,  Kant  took  this  doctrine  of 
what  one  might  call  the  higher  common  sense,  and,  as  we 
shall  also  see  in  his  theoretical  philosophy,  he  applied 
it  to  everything  from  geometry  to  theology.  So  applied 
the  thing  becomes  vastly  involved,  prodigiously  technical, 
the  work  of  a  life-time.  But  the  hearty  and  humane 
Kant  stirred  his  age  so  profoundly  because  in  his  quiet 
way  he  carried,  deep  in  his  pious  soul,  a  doctrine  of 
Jife  so  simple,  so  stern,  so  heroic,  and  yet  so  universally 
manly  and  sensible,  that  all  modern  men  were  touched  by 
it.  This  is,  indeed,  the  wonder  of  Kant,  that,  born  and 
reared  in  the  midst  of  pedantry,  a  mere  man  of  books,  a 
system-maker,  a  metaphysician,  he  should  still  express  the 
very  heart  of  the  high-minded  man  of  the  world.  "  I  am 
very  ignorant  of  the  nature  of  things,"  —  so  far  Kant  and 
the  man  of  the  world  are  together ;  "  but  I  do  know  my 
duty,  and  I  am  determined  to  live  as  under  God's  eye,"  — 
this  is  the  other,  the  practically  positive  side  of  Kant's 
doctrine,  and,  as  you  see,  once  more  the  high-minded  man 
is  with  Kant.  This  doctrine,  however,  means,  of  course, 
in  the  reflective  thinker,  far  more  in  one  sense  than  it 
means  in  the  man  of  the  world.  It  leads  him  to  an 
exhaustive  research  into  the  foundations  of  human  reason, 
it  means  decades  of  philosophical  experience,  of  wander- 
ing from  hypothesis  to  hypothesis,  of  criticism,  of  resigna- 
tion to  the  truth,  combined  with  fearless  constructive 
research.  And  that,  again,  is  why  it  finally  takes  in 
Kant's  case  so  elaborate  a  form. 

To  this  form  itself  we  now  proceed.  If  Kant's  reli- 
gious consciousness  underwent  little  change  with  years,  his 
theoretical  opinions  were  subjected  between  1755,  when 
he  entered  upon  his  docentship  at  the  university,  and 
1781,  when  he  published  his  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason," 


KANT.  119 

to  a  course  of  discipline  such  as  few  men  have  ever  borne 
and  lived.  In  matters  of  theory,  Kant  was,  after  all, 
by  nature  a  very  conservative  person.  Some  men  are 
born  rebels,  and  some  men  have  the  reformer's  office 
thrust  upon  them.  Kant  was  of  the  latter  class.  He  was 
as  rigidly  economical  of  his  faiths  as  he  was  of  all  his  other 
possessions.  He  never  gave  up  an  idea  until  his  self-crit- 
icism forced  him  to  do  so.  Skeptical,  I  have  called  him, 
above  all  men  ;  but  his  skepticism  meant  at  the  start  mere 
considerateness,  mere  thoroughness  and  honesty  of  reflec- 
tion. He  had  no  wish  to  make  his  reflections  negative. 
If  fortune  forced  negative  results  upon  him,  he  could  not 
help  that.1  Against  change  he,  to  be  sure,  never  blindly 
struggled,  just  as  he  never  hastened  towards  the  revolu- 
tion that  he  was  destined  to  bring  to  pass.  Shall  I  weary 
you  too  much  if  I  sketch  to  you  a  little  of  Kant's  reflec- 
tive fortunes? 

He  began,  in  his  youth,  where  the  traditional  university 
philosophy  of  his  time  had  placed  him,  with  the  traditions 
of  the  philosophy  of  the  seventeenth  century  in  his  mind. 
The  world  where  he  found  himself  was  the  world  that 
reason  comprehends,  where  all  is  to  be  clear,  distinct,  log- 
ical, formal.  We  know  a  real  world  of  law,  where  God 
reigns,  and  where  everything  is  rational.  The  philoso- 
pher is  to  make  plain  the  logic  of  things.  But  alas  for 
the  fixity  of  this  formalism !  Kant  is  unfortunately  more 
than  a  mere  philosopher.  He  loves  to  study  science  and 
man.  And  in  the  world  of  science  there  are  so  many  sur- 
prising things,  so  many  strange  facts,  that  logic  can't  con- 
struct, —  yes,  there  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth 
than  are  dreamt  of  in  your  philosophy.  And  not  mere 

1  See  the  valuable  note,  No.  3,  in  Benno  Erdmann's  Reftexionen 
Kant's,  vol.  ii.  p.  4,  where  Kant  states  very  finely  his  relations  to 
skepticism  and  to  dogmatism.  My  own  immediately  following  para- 
graph is  an  effort  to  summarize  the  much  discussed  and  rather  ob< 
»c»re  period  from  1755  to  1766. 


120  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

magic,  not  only  superstition  shows  you  such  things,  as 
they  were  shown  to  Hamlet.  It  is  just  science  that  proves 
how,  amidst  all  the  longings  of  our  reason  for  the  clear 
and  distinct  truth  of  nature,  we  are  continually  in  the 
presence  of  opaque  and  ultimate  facts,  —  yes,  even  of  prin- 
ciples that  our  pure  reason  could  n't  have  predicted  — 
such  principles,  for  instance,  as  the  law  of  gravitation. 
And  as  for  man,  how  mysterious  and  often  how  illogical 
is  his  wayward  inner  nature.  Kant  meditates  upon  these 
things.  Can  logic,  after  all,  give  you  a  world  ?  As  Kant 
thus  examines  the  littleness  of  our  powers,  he  grows,  as  it 
were,  an  ascetic  in  the  enjoyment  of  his  logic.  He  is  n't 
so  sure  that  you  can  spin  the  world  out  of  reason.  He 
doubts  whether  the  secret  of  things  can  ever  be  made 
open  to  even  the  highest  finite  intelligence.  Perhaps  the 
lesson  of  philosophy  will  prove  to  be  resignation.  At  all 
events  the  lesson  of  every  failure  of  reflective  thought  is 
sure  to  ba  caution. 

So  far  Kant  went  in  the  first  ten  years  of  his  univer- 
sity life  as  decent.  The  results  of  his  work  were  poor. 
They  almost  discouraged  him.  Often  he  imagined  him- 
self on  the  very  verge  of  discovering  a  great  and  new 
method  of  thinking.  As  often  he  seemed  to  be  disap- 
pointed. "  I  have  the  fortune,"  he  says,  in  1766,  "  to  be 
a  lover  of  Metaphysics ;  but  ray  mistress  has  shown  me 
few  favors  so  far."  In  those  days,  and  later,  Kant  as 
a  student  had  odd  fashions  of  work.  He  jotted  down 
numberless  notes,  chaotic-seeming  dead  leaves  of  fallen 
reflection  that  lay,  as  it  were,  forgotten  amidst  the  dark 
forest  of  his  secret  thought.  He  cared  little  for  such 
notes  ;  he  let  the  dead  leaves  moulder  into  the  soil,  if  we 
may  say  so,  to  fertilize  it  for  the  coming  springtime ;  and 
now,  indeed,  it  was  the  autumn  of  his  silent  meditations. 
Since  his  death,  Kant's  lovers  have  busily  hunted  for  such 
of  the  autumn  leaves  as  did  not  moulder,  and  to-day  there 
are  Kant  archives  in  the  Konigsberg  library,  and  else* 


KANT.  121 

where,  where  such  things  are  kept  and  prized.  Singular 
bits  of  paper  they  are,  these  notes  1  The  poor  and 
thrifty  Kant  wasted  nothing.  Here,  say,  is  an  old  invita- 
tion to  dinner,  or  to  a  visit  at  Herr  So  and  So's  country- 
house.  Kant  has  refolded  the  letter,  and  has  written,  not 
only  on  its  back,  but  perchance  all  about  and  through  its 
text,  such  memoranda  as  that  Mr.  Charisius  Stockheim  has 
paid  his  fees  for  the  course  this  term,  and  that  in  a  capil- 
lary tube  of  such  a  diameter  water  rises  so  high.  He 
adds,  perhaps,  some  quoted  Latin  verses,  the  title  of  a 
book  or  two,  and  then  a  paragraph  of  metaphysics.  Real- 
ity can  only  be  given  to  us  through  sensation,  but  per. 
ception  adds  thereto  the  construction  of  the  idea  of  quan- 
tity ;  then  there  are,  moreover,  just  three  functions  of 
apperception  ;  but  the  mind  itself  gives  us  the  only  idea  of 
what  synthesis  means.  Thereupon,  perhaps  Kant  jots 
down  a  triangle  or  two,  makes  a  computation,  and  lets  his 
note-making  degenerate  into  illegible  marks.  What  one 
wonders  at  is  the  vast  numbers  of  such  scraps.  Kant 
never  let  a  thought  go  by.  The  margins  and  interleav- 
ings  of  his  books,  especially  of  his  lecture  text-books,  were 
also  full  of  such  things.  So  unwearied  was  Kant.  The 
years  fly  on  and  he  notes  and  notes  —  so  fruitlessly,  one 
would  think !  He  is  so  faithful  to  his  thoughts,  and  yet 
so  merciless,  —  so  faithful,  for  they  all  go  down ;  so  merci- 
less, for  he  takes  no  pain  to  give  them  permanent  form 
or  fair  shape  and  organization.  Later  jottings  seem  to 
have  forgotten  the  earlier  ones.  The  children  of  his  re- 
flection are  never  spared.  He  loves  them  not ;  he  flies 
from  them  to  new  thoughts.  On  and  on  his  life  of  medita- 
tion grows,  so  slowly,  so  patiently,  once  more  just  like  the 
forest.  What  is  the  meaning,  what  will  be  the  outcome 
of  this  endless  bearing  and  casting  down  of  thoughts  ? 1 
Yet  there  is  indeed  method  in  it  all.  About  1768,  Kant 

1  The  illustrations  of   Kant's  notes  above  are  brought  together 
from  several  places  iu  Reicke's  Lose  Blatter  aus  Kant's  Nachlass. 


122  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

shows  traces  of  a  wholly  new  fashion  of  thinking.  The 
world  undergoes  a  change  for  him,  whose  significance,  at 
first,  he  himself  can  hardly  estimate.  He  observes,  in  a 
fresh  fashion,  and  with  a  novel  accent,  how  all  truth  about 
the  physical  world  is  dependent  upon  the  truth  concern- 
ing  time  and  space.  I  reword  some  of  his  thoughts  about 
space  in  my  own  way.  Whatever  matter  there  were  in 
the  outer  world,  there  would  in  any  case  have  to  be  space 
to  put  the  matter  in,  and  so  the  laws  of  matter  have  to 
conform  to  the  laws  of  space.  Nature  must  perforce  obey 
geometry ;  else  could  she  get  no  room  for  her  things,  and 
even  so  with  time.  The  laws  of  space  come  first  in  order. 
The  laws  of  physics  come,  as  it  were,  logically  later,  and 
must  be  congruent  with  the  space  laws.  But  space,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  not  obliged  to  conform  to  the  laws  of 
matter.  Just  as  the  principle  that  what  is  done  can't  be 
undone,  even  so  the  principle  that  a  straight  line  is  the 
shortest  distance  between  two  points,  or  that  you  can't 
put  the  left  glove  on  the  right  hand,  illustrates  formal 
laws  of  the  world,  prior  in  nature  to  the  laws  of  matter. 
Moving  bodies  may  fly  as  they  will  in  accordance  with 
laws  of  physics.  They  cannot  fly  in  accordance  with  any 
possible  law  so  as  to  move  through  the  shortest  distances 
and  yet  not  fly  in  straight  lines.  The  matter  of  your 
hands  may  have  what  laws  or  nature  it  will ;  nothing 
could  permit  the  left  glove  to  go  on  to  the  right  hand  but 
a  change  in  the  necessary  laws  of  geometry.  Geometrical 
laws,  then,  like  the  laws  of  time,  go  together  to  make 
nature  possible.  Know  what  space  and  time  are,  and  you 
will  know  something  about  the  truths  that  condition  the 
world's  very  existence.1 

Well,  then,  what  are  space  and  time  ?     About  1769,  it 

1  The  importance  here  given  to  the  well-known  essay  of  1768  is 
in  agreement  so  far  with  Riehl's  view  (Der  Philosophische  Kriticismus, 
Tol.  i.  p.  262).  See  also  Caird,  op.  cit.  vol.  i.  p.  164.  From  this 
point  on,  I  follow  partly  the  views  of  Beuno  Erdmann. 


KANT.  123 

occurred  to  Kant  to  observe  that  both  space  and  time  are, 
when  regarded  as  real  things,  thoroughly  and  hopelessly 
paradoxical,  self -contradictory  in  their  nature.  Kant  was 
fond  in  those  days  x  of  setting  over  against  one  another 
opposing  assertions  about  fundamental  truths,  and  giving 
a  fair  chance  to  both  sides  in  the  controversy.  He  elab- 
orated this  old  method  of  research  very  carefully  and  in 
an  original  fashion,  and  in  consequence  he  called  it  by 
special  names  of  his  own  choosing.  He  used  it  to  bring 
out  the  paradoxical  character  that  after  all  lies  so  deeply 
imbedded  in  the  very  heart  of  all  human  thinking.  Ap- 
plying this  fashion  of  analysis  to  space  and  time,  Kant 
found  that,  if  you  once  regard  them  as  realities,  as  facts 
existent  outside  your  own  mind,  you  can  make  diametri- 
cally opposed  assertions  about  them,  and  yet  prove  both 
of  a  pair  of  such  assertions  to  be  true.  The  result  so  far 
is  puzzling ;  but  look  at  it  an  instant.  Of  space  you  can 
say  that  it  is  infinitely  divisible,  that  is,  that  cut  it  up  as 
small  as  you  like,  the  parts  will  still  have  size,  and  so  can 
be  cut  again,  so  that  you  could  never  reach  the  end  of  your 
cutting.  This  you  can  say,  and  you  can  prove  it  too,  if, 
namely,  space  is  a  real  thing  that  stays  there  to  be  cut, 
apart  from  your  ideas  of  it.  Equally  certain  it  is,  how- 
ever, in  case  space  is  real,  and  is  made  up  of  parts,  that 
then,  if  you  let  it  in  conception  crumble  away  like  a  heap 
of  sand,  to  find  what  in  the  last  analysis  it  is  made  of, 
there  must  be  found  somewhere  ultimate  parts,  real  space- 
atoms,  which  you  could  reach  by  this  process  of  ideal 
analysis,  and  which  you  could  n't  divide.  For  if  there  is 
a  heap  of  manifold  parts,  like  a  heap  of  sand,  and  you 
conceive  it  to  fall  into  bits  for  the  sake  of  analysis,  then 
surely  where  there  are  many  units  there  must  be  units. 
Therefore,  if  space  is  a  reality,  you  can  prove,  thinks 
Kant,  that  it  is  infinitely  divisible  and  that  it  is  n't  infi- 

1  See  the  introduction  to  Benno  Erdmanu's  Reflexionen  Kant's  zuf 
Kritischtn  Philosophic,  vol.  ii.  p.  zzxv. 


124  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

nitely  divisible.  That  seems  absurd,  but  what  does  such 
an  absurd  result  prove  ?  It  proves,  so  Kant  holds,  that 
space  is  n't  real  at  all,  but  just  an  idea  of  yours,  a  uni- 
versal but  inner  condition  of  your  consciousness  of  outer 
objects.  This  result  is  revolutionary  for  him.  Space  and 
time,  he  had  already  said,  are  the  conditions  prior  of  all 
physical  nature.  And  now  space  and  time  can  be  thus 
proved  to  be  unreal  outside  of  our  minds.  What  follows  ? 
The  whole  of  this  seeming  outer  nature  is  no  outer  fact  at 
all.  It  is  a  mere  phenomenon  in  us.  That  doctrine  is 
the  first  half  of  Kant's  critical  philosophy. 

IV. 

In  1770,  he  stated  this  theory  of  the  subjectivity  of 
time  and  space,  as  he  called  his  notion,  in  a  dissertation 
that  he  wrote  on  his  assumption  of  a  professor's  chair  at 
Konigsberg.  In  this  dissertation  he  gives  yet  another 
proof  of  his  new  doctrine.  Space  and  time  can't  be  real, 
Kant  now  says,  for  we  know  too  much  about  them,  know . 
them,  not  by  bare  observation,  but  with  a  mathematical 
completeness  such  as  we  could  n't  possess  with  regard  to 
outer  facts,  know  more  than  we  could  have  found  out  if 
they  existed  really  beyond  ourselves.  We  know,  for  in- 
stance, of  time  and  space  as  they  are  for  our  minds,  that 
they  are  infinite  wholes,  prior  to  any  of  their  own  parts  as 
well  as  to  the  things  that  exist  in  them.  Furthermore,  as 
you  can  easily  see,  space  and  time  don't  seem  to  us  to  be' 
properties  of  things,  as  color  and  taste  are ;  nor  yet  are. 
they  separate  things  of  nature.  Rather  are  they  just  con- 
ditions of  our  sense-knowledge  of  things.  So,  then,  they 
can't  be  real  at  all,  except  as  facts  of  our  consciousness. 
Kant  therefore  calls  space  and  time  forms  of  perception, 
or  sense-forms.  Our  world  seems  to  be  in  space  and  time 
because  it  is  our  own  nature  to  view  it  as  spatial  and  tem- 
poral. Space  and  time  appear  to  us  to  belong  outside 
us,  merely  because  they  are  conditions  in  us  of  our  seeing 


KANT.  125 

and  feeling  things,  forms  of  our  sense.  It  is  with  them 
as  with  colored  spectacles.  If  one  always  wore  green 
goggles,  all  his  world  would  seem  green  to  him.  Even 
so,  because  we  always  perceive  under  these  forms  of 
sense,  space  and  time,  which  are  just  our  forms  of  per- 
ceiving things,  cannot  but  seem  real  to  us.  In  fact  they 
are  n't  revelations  of  truth  outside  us  at  all.  They  are 
our  own  fashions  of  receiving  the  things  that  we  perceive. 
It  was  largely  in  consequence  of  this  doctrine,  which  1 
state  now,  after  all,  in  its  outcome,  rather  than  in  its  full 
proof,  that  Kant  later  came  to  declare  that  the  things 
themselves  outside  of  us,  which  arouse  our  sensations,  the 
things  as  they  are  in  themselves,  since  they  can't  be  spa- 
tial, nor  temporal,  are  in  fact  utterly  unknowable.  No- 
body can  prove  the  least  thing  about  what  the  real  world 
is.  We  know  first  of  all  only  our  own  sense  impressions, 
which  are  whatever  they  happen  to  be.  We  know  also 
that  there  are  things  beyond  us  which  we  view  through 
our  sense-forms.  But  what  those  things  are,  how  should 
we  ever  find  out  ?  We  are  cut  off  from  them  by  the  illu- 
sions of  sense.  We  know  our  seeming  world  in  space  and 
in  time.  It  has  law  and  order  in  it,  such  law  and  order 
as  science  finds  there.  Astronomy  is  true  for  the  seeming 
world,  although  in  the  absolute  world  there  is  no  space, 
and  although  what  the  stars  and  the  atoms  are  is  unknow- 
able. But  thus,  you  see,  we  have  found  a  limit  to  science. 
It  can  never  know  things  in  themselves.  And  so  Kant's 
critical  doctrine  ultimately  came  to  be  one  of  the  neces- 
sary limits  of  all  theoretical  thought. 

That,  at  least,  was  the  idea  that  Kant  in  his  later 
works  reached.  In  1770,  he  still  hoped  to  find  by  some 
device  of  logic  a  way  to  a  knowledge  of  things  in  them- 
selves beyond  our  private  and  human  sense-forms  of  space 
and  time.  But  from  this  hopeful  "  dogmatic  slumber  " 
(as  he  once  calls  it)  Hume's  skepticism  finally  awoke  him 
in  the  years  immediately  following  17 72.1 

1  Of  several  hypotheses  current  iu  the  literature  of  the  topic  I 


126  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODEKN  PHILOSOPHY. 

V. 

Hume  it  was  who  gave  the  final  touch  to  Kant's  re- 
flection by  his  stern  assertion  that  in  the  world  of  expe- 
rience facts  are  only  conjoined,  and  never  connected.  Iu> 
pressions  we  know,  says  Hume,  and  ideas  we  know  ;  but 
who  ever  yet  saw  causation,  or  experienced  necessity? 
In  the  world  of  sense  there  are  facts,  but  there  are  no 
links.  You  see  things  happen ;  you  can't  see  why  they 
must  happen.  This  criticism  of  Hume's  deeply  affected 
Kant.  Kant  had  already  almost  given  up  finding  out  the 
nature  of  outer  things  by  logic.  He  was  ready  very  soon 
to  give  it  up  altogether.  He  was  content  with  the  narrow 
limits  of  our  sense-forms  ;  if  only  the  seeming  space-and- 
time-world,  the  seeming  world  which  science  looks  upon 
and  examines,  could  be  shown  to  have  order  in  it.  The 
astronomer  does  n't  care  whether  space  and  time  are  sense- 
forms,  or  whether  he  knows  or  not  the  stars  as  they  are  in 
themselves.  What  he  wants  to  be  sure  of  is  that  nature, 
seeming  or  real,  in  show-space  or  in  itself,  has  discover- 
able law  and  order  in  it,  uniformity,  causal  fixity,  genuine 
reasonableness,  about  it.  Well,  Kant  wanted  to  make 
out  this  thing,  too.  He  thought  it  over  in  silence  for  some 
years.  The  result  of  his  reflection  was  expressed  in  the 
great  "  Critique."  And  that  new  result,  the  second  and 
greater  half  of  his  doctrine,  was  something  like  the  follow, 
ing:  — 

In  so  far  as  the  world  is  seen  by  us  in  our  sense-forms 
of  space  and  time,  it  is  bound  to  appear  to  us  as  conform- 
able to  their  laws.  Nature,  then,  is  forced  to  obey  geome- 
try, because  nature,  after  all,  is  just  a  show-nature,  our 

choose  the  most  probable.  Here  as  before  I  largely  follow  Benno 
Erdnmnn.  The  awakening  influence  of  Hnme  was  formerly  referred 
to  the  years  from  1762  to  1766.  Professor  Paulsen  of  Berlin  first 
called  in  question  this  view,  and  suggested  1769  as  a  more  likely 
date. 


KANT.  127 

own  experience,  and  so  conformable  to  our  own  funda- 
mentally geometrical  ways  of  viewing  it.  Well,  even  so, 
when  we  think  of  natural  events,  there  are  certain  con- 
ditions governing  our  thinking  process.  And  to  these 
conditions  the  products  of  our  thought,  the  objects  of  our 
experience,  must  needs  conform.  For  the  objects  of 
our  experience  aren't  the  things  in  themselves,  but  are 
just  our  thoughts.  If  our  thought,  as  a  process  of  com- 
prehending our  experience,  is  obliged  to  treat  the  facts 
before  it  as  conforming  to  rational  laws,  in  order  to  think 
of  them  at  all,  well,  then,  the  facts  of  experience,  being 
once  for  all  facts  of  inner  life,  will  have  to  conform  to 
law,  and  that  will  be  the  end  of  it.  To  be  sure,  if  we 
knew  by  sight  the  things  as  they  are  in  themselves,  we 
should  indeed  have  to  conform  wholly  to  their  ways  ;  and, 
as  Hume's  criticism  implied,  unless  we  then  saw  causa- 
tion and  necessary  -connection  amongst  the  matters  of 
fact,  we  could  n't  be  sure  of  such  connections  at  all.  But, 
you  see,  we  don't  know  by  sight  any  things  in  themselves. 
We  see  only  the  show-world  in  the  sense-forms.  Its  mat- 
ters of  fact  are  then  just  our  own  matters  of  fact.  In 
knowing  nature  we  are  but  learning  to  know  ourselves. 
If  it  is  the  fundamental  fashion  of  our  thinking  to  become 
conscious  of  objects  as  orderly,  then  orderly  they  will  be 
for  us.  Then  our  world  will  have  in  it  not  only  conjunc- 
tion, but  connection  of  facts.  Our  understanding  will 
think  the  linkages  into  our  show-world.  The  dutifully 
bound  seeming  universe  of  our  experience  will  obey  the 
law  of  the  inner  life,  whose  thought  it  is.  This  obedience 
will  control  all  things,  however  remote,  in  these  phantom- 
forms  of  space  and  time,  —  yes,  as  it  were,  will  preserve 
the  stars  from  wrong,  and  the  most  ancient  heavens 
through  this  be  fresh  and  strong.  Is  such  a  conception  a 
paradox  ?  Then  look  at  it  once  more.1 

1  The   immediately   following   free    paraphrase    of    one    central 
thought  of  the  "  deduction  "  is  more  fully  discussed  in  Supplement 


128  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

A  sane  man  differs  from  a  man  with  a  maniacal  flight 
of  ideas,  or  from  a  patient  in  delirium,  most  in  this,  that 
the  sane  man,  at  every  moment,  looks,  as  it  were,  out  of 
this  moment  to  his  larger  self,  and  links  this  moment  with 
the  past  and  future,  while  the  other's  soul,  as  Kant  would 
say  (although  he  does  not  use  this,  my  own  illustration), 
is  filled  with  a  Gewiihl  von  Erscheinungen,  with  a  mass 
of  flighty  seemings.  The  sane  man  continually  collects 
himself,  as  we  ordinarily  express  it,  binds  this  to  that, 
and  thereby,  —  and  this  is  Kant's  central  thought,  — 
thereby  sees  links  in  his  seeming  outer  world  just  be- 
cause he  does  collect  himself,  just  because  it  is  of  the 
essence  of  his  sanity  to  think  connections  there  yonder  in 
his  show-world.  Kant  has  a  technical  name  for  what  I 
have  just  named  sanity.  He  himself  does  not  use  the 
latter  word ;  he  calls  this  process  and  condition  of  all 
rational  consciousness  Transcendental  Unity  of  appercep- 
tion. It  depends  upon  and  involves  self-recognition  ;  but 
self-recognition,  if  you  look  at  it  carefully,  is  indeed  seen 
to  include  the  binding  of  fact  to  fact  in  your  experience. 
If  I  be  I,  as  I  think  I  be,  says  the  little  old  woman  of 
the  song,  then  will  my  little  dog  know  me.  The  poor 
woman  is  striviag,  you  remember,  to  recover  the  unity  of 
her  apperception,  of  which  a  sad  and  recent  incident  has 
deprived  her.  She  seeks  it,  and  how  ?  By  striving  to 
link  fact  to  fact  in  her  sleepy  experience.  Well,  even  so, 
Kant  holds,  that  if  I  be  I,  as  I  think  I  be,  then  will  the 
phenomena  of  my  sense-world  in  a  certain  deeper  just 
sense  know  me,  that  is,  recognize  the  authority  of  my 
thought-forms,  or  categories.  The  little  woman,  then,  had, 
in  her  way,  grasped  the  idea  of  that  most  puzzling  part  of 
Kant's  "  Critique,"  the  so-called  transcendental  deduction 
of  the  categories.  For  once  more,  if  I  am  to  be  at  this 

B.  The  illustration  of  the  "  Unity  of  Apperception  "  by  the  idea  ol 
u  sanity  "  is,  I  think,  justified  by  many  aspects  of  Kant's  phraseology, 
remote  as  it  is  from  his  own  wording. 


KANT,  129 

sane,  then  I  must  regard  myself  as  much  more 
than  this  momentary  self.  I  must  communicate,  as  it 
were,  with  my  past  and  my  future,  which  are  n't  now  here 
at  all.  And  in  doing  this,  causation,  and  the  other  ideas 
of  connection  in  nature,  are  the  tools  of  my  understanding. 
They  give  to  my  objects  a  communicable,  a  typical,  a 
universal  character.  By  connecting  facts  in  my  mind,  I 
connect  my  mind  in  itself.  This  desk  before  me,  to  take 
yet  another  example,  this  desk,  as  a  fact  in  my  sense  form 
of  space  and  time,  is  the  product  of  my  natural  sanity, 
which  simply  makes  coherent  a  mass  of  feelings,  holds 
together  in  some  sort  of  unity  what  I  see  and  touch. 
In  so  far  as  I  am  a  sensible  person  I  say  to  myself,  "  All 
these  feelings  of  mine  just  at  this  point  of  space  must 
somehow  belong  together.  Hereby  only  can  I  make  an 
object  out  of  them,  having  a  permanent  type  that  I  can 
recognize  again.  This  object  must  also  somehow  cohere 
with  what  I  have  seen  before,  because  I  am  one  self,  and 
my  experience  must  somehow  hold  together.  Therefore 
I  say  that  the  object  has  substantiality,  that  it  persists  in 
time,  that  whenever  it  came  into  being  something  pro- 
duced it  as  its  cause,  and  so  on."  Thus,  you  see,  I  bring 
the  table  into  my  world,  into  the  one  coherent  experience 
which  constitutes  my  larger  self.  To  my  larger  self,  to 
my  whole  actual  and  possible  coherent  experience,  always 
I  look  up ;  to  this  I  make  my  active  appeal.  The  moment 
is  my  moment  so  far  only  as  it  conforms  to  the  universal 
and  orderly  types  of  my  whole  self -consciousness. 

In  large  part,  however,  this  process  of  constructively 
making  my  world  coherent,  is,  on  its  theoretical  side 
indeed  unconscious,  just  as  the  inventions  of  an  artistic 
mind  are  often  unconsciously  made.  There  is  in  me  a 
blind  application  of  my  forms  of  thought,  a  reasonable 
but  not  necessarily  self-conscious  defense  of  my  sanity. 
Kant  calls  this  busy  and  half-blind  application  of  the 
forms  of  thought  to  the  facts  of  sense;  ^whereby  we  make 


130  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

everything,  from  pictures  in  the  firelight  to  the  suhlimest 
constructions  of  science,  whereby  we  get  our  great  world 
of  tables  and  people  and  houses  and  suns  and  star-systems 
and  atoms  and  laws  of  nature,  —  he  calls,  I  say,  this  busy 
inner  world-building  power  _of  our  minds  the  "constructive 
imagination."  It  builds  solely  on  the  basis  of  our  expe- 
rienced sensations ;  it  produces  purely  in  the  forms  of 
space  and  time ;  it  has  as  theoretical  power  nothing  to 
say  of  God,  nor  yet  of  the  moral  law ;  it  builds  our  world 
as  a  great  genius  makes  a  poem,  how,  he  knows  not ;  it  is 
involuntary,  hidden  away  in  the  mind,  the  servant  of  our 
understanding,  the  minister  of  the  forms  of  thought ;  but 
it  gives  us  this  bright  and  solid  world  that  is  all  about  us  ; 
and,  in  the  way  of  theoretical  knowledge,  we  have  nothing 
better  than  what  it  gives  us.  Without  continual  support 
from  sense,  this  poetical  faculty  of  ours  could  do  nothing. 
As  sensations,  unformed,  would  be  a  mere  flight  of  ideas, 
unreal  and  insane,  so  these  notions  of  the  understanding, 
causation,  substantiality,  and  the  rest,  have  no  meaning 
except  as  applied  by  our  constructive  imagination  to  ren- 
dering coherent  our  world  of  sense.  That  is  just  why  we 
do  not  know  at  all  that  these  forms  of  thought  apply  to 
the  things  in  themselves. 

And  it  is  thus  that  so  much  the  more,  when  we  come  to 
those  other  objects  of  pure  and  constructively  voluntary 
faith,  namely,  God  and  the  rest,  we  have  a  right  to  trust 
"  the  truths  that  never  can  be  proved."  For  by  this  theo- 
retical doctrine  we  have  shown  that  nothing  but  the  clear 
and  unmistakable  demands  of  the  moral  law,  which  re- 
quires of  us  a  submission  to  an  eternally  significant  order, 
could  ever  by  any  possibility  carry  us  beyond  sense.  We 
have  no  theoretical  power  whereby  we  can  escape  from 
the  prison  of  the  inner  life,  or  from  the  purely  phenome. 
nal  reality,  the  show-world,  which  our  constructive  imagi- 
nation builds  up.  Theoretically  speaking,  our  show-world 
la  only  the  poem  which  the  inner  life  makes.  Hence  only 


KANT.  181 

our  homage  to  the  absolute  imperative  of  our  practical 
reason,  which  categorically  demands  of  us  that  we  act  as 
if  we  were  in  an  eternal  world,  —  only  this,  and  our  free 
choice  to  obey,  can  put  us  into  relations  with  the  unknown 
beyond  sense.  The  theoretical  view  of  things,  this  work 
of  art  of  the  inner  life,  is  morally  insufficient.  Hence  we 
have  to  postulate  God  beyond  it.  Such,  then,  in  sum,  is  the 
content  of  my  world.  The  understanding  creates  the  laws 
of  phenomenal  nature,  creates  them,  indeed,  not  without 
the  most  close  and  constant  reference  to  the  facts  of  sense, 
creates  them,  in  truth,  merely  by  actively  uniting  together 
these  facts  of  sense,  but  still  creates  the  whole  organiza- 
tion, the  coherence,  the  unity,  the  sanity,  of  our  world  of 
business,  of  society,  and  of  science.  The  stars,  too,  just 
because  they  are  our  stars,  experienced  by  us,  must  be 
orderly,  as  our  understanding  is  orderly.  That  you  and  I 
see  the  same  world  depends  merely  upon  the  fact  that 
we  all  work  upon  similar  ideas  of  sense  with  similar 
powers  of  understanding.  We  all  have  part,  as  it  were, 
in  the  one  ideal  self  of  humanity's  experience.  For  us  all 
alike  this  world  is  an  inner  creation.  To  state  the  case 
finally,  in  a  general  formula:  The  unknown  things  in 
themselves  give  us^ sense  experiences.  These  we  first  per- 
ceivejn~the  forms  ofspaee  and  time,  because  that  is  bar 
way  of  perceiving  Then,  being  coherent  creatures,  we 

i  i  -.-r-_  O  O  r 

order  this  our  world  of  sense  according  to  the  laws  of 
causation  and  the  other  "  categories "  which  are  forms 
of  thought.  Thus  we  all  alike  get  a  world,  which,  while 
it  is  in  all  its  sanity  and  order  an  inner  world,  is  still  for 
each  of  us  apparently  an  outer  world,  —  a  world  of  fact, 
a  world  of  life.  The  unity  of  our  personality  demands 
the  unity  of  our  experience  ;  this  demands  that  our  show- 
world  of  nature  should  conform  to  the  laws  of  thought ; 
and  thus  causality,  necessity,  and  all  the  other  categories 
of  the  understanding  are  realized  in  the  world  through 
our  constructive  imagination,  which  working  in  the  sei> 


132  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

vice  of  the  understanding  actively  puts  them   into  the 
world. 

VI. 

By  this  marvelously  subtle  thought  Kant  at  once  de- 
stroys and  builds  up.  The  world  of  Locke's  bare  expe- 
rience vanishes.  The  world  of  the  Cartesian  innate  ideas 
is  nothing  any  more.  Even  for  Spinoza's  eternal  order, 
"S  an  outward  fact,  Kant's  theory  has  no  place.  He  de- 
votes long  sections  of  the  "  Critique "  to  an  elaborate 
undermining  of  every  form  of  speculative  dogmatism.  As 
the  freeman  hates  tyrants,  so  Kant  hates  submission  to  an 
outward  and  absolute  order  invented  by  the  pretensions 
of  a  thought  that  would  transcend  our  limited  powers. 
And  yet  he  does  n't  assert  all  this  for  the  mere  sake  of 
destructive  skepticism.  One  certainty  remains  to  him 
which  is  indeed  absolute  enough.  It  is  that  certainty  of 
the  moral  law,  which  in  Kant's  system  takes  the  place 
that  the  adoration  of  the  eternal  order  took  in  Spinoza's 
doctrine.  To  the  moral  law  and  its  consequences,  Kant 
devoted  three  of  the  most  important  of  his  later  works. 
You  know  theoretically  only  that  rigid  order  of  the  world 
of  show  which  is  indeed  enough  for  empirical  science,  but 
which  gives  you  no  warrant  to  talk  about  things  as  they 
are  in  themselves.  But  you  do  know  one  practical  cer- 
tainty which  sends  you  far  beyond  sense.  You  know  that 
you  ought  to  do  right,  and  doing  right  for  Kant  is  some- 
thing very  simple,  rigid,  and  absolute.  There  is  no  com- 
promise in  his  case  between  the  moral  law  and  the  desires 
of  sense.  Inclination  and  duty  are  no  friends  for  Kant. 
To  do  right,  thinks  Kant,  is  to  act  at  any  time  as  you 
could  wish  that  a  whole  world  full  of  moral  agents  should 
act,  to  act  after  a  fashion  worthy  to  be  made  a  public  and 
universal  law  of  life.  The  moral  law  admits  of  no  excep- 
tions. It  is  reasonableness  in  action.  \  Kant  loves  to 
dwell  on  its  simple  and  awful  sublimity.  Universality  of 
die  method  or  principle  of  your  conduct  is  its  aim.  Abso* 


KANT.  133 

Inte  truthfulness,  absolute  respect  for  the  rights  and  free- 
dom of  every  one  of  your  fellow-men,  utter  devotion  to 
the  cause  of  high-mindedness,  of  honesty,  of  justice,  of 
simplicity,  of  honor,  —  such  is  Kant's  ideal,  and  so  far  as 
in  him  lay  he  was  always  true  to  it.  It  is  a  stern  and 
rigid  ideal,  very  rare  in  philosophy,  and  even  infrequent 
in  the  life  of  the  world  ;  but  it  is  Kant's  ideal.  And  now 
he  further  says :  In  this  show-world  of  your  limitation  and 
ignorance,  you  are  bound  to  behave  thus  reasonably  and 
siiblimely,  and  there  is  necessarily  associated  with  your  be- 
havior a  determination  to  trust  faithfully  and  absolutely 
that  the  right,  thus  acted  out,  will  triumph,  and  that 
there  is  a  God  who  will  see  that  it  triumphs.  You  are 
moved  so  to  trust  in  God,  because  that  is  simply  the  wise 
and  honorable  thing  to  do.  And  this  world  of  yours,  as 
one  sees,  is  not  a  world  of  absolute  insight,  but  first  of 
sane  and  active  unification  of  your  personal  experience, 
and  then  of  honorable  doing,  a  world  whose  highest  wis- 
dom is  the  service  of  the  ideal  that  reason  conceives. 

This  hasty  sketch  has  now  put  before  yon,  not  Kant's 
whole  doctrine,  but  something  of  the  fine  and  manly  atti- 
tude which,  amidst  all  his  subtlety  and  his  skepticism,  he 
always  maintained.  I  know  not  how  wearisome  this  sub- 
tlety itself  has  been  to  you,  even  in  my  utterly  fragmen- 
tary suggestion  of  its  quality.  The  professional  student 
often  forgets  how  these  things  used  to  seem  10  him  when 
he  began  his  work,  and  wonders  now  how  such  long  pur- 
suit of  the  inner  life,  even  into  the  recesses  of  its  dimmest 
and  most  sacred  temples  of  faith,  may  appear  to  those 
who  do  not  spend  their  lives  in  such  wanderings.  Well, 
be  that  all  what  it  may,  my  duty  is  done  if  I  have  sug- 
gested to  you  anything  of  a  doctrine  which  has  created 
the  philosophy  of  the  present  century ;  and  as  for  the 
present  obscurity  of  the  whole  to  you,  remember  that  all 
the  rest  of  these  lectures  will  be  of  necessity,  in  one 
aspect,  an  exposition  of  the  consequences  of  this  theory 
of  Kant,  so  that  we  shall  know  it  better  hereafter. 


134  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

What,  then,  is  our  outcome  ?  We  have  reached  almost 
the  opposite  pole  of  reflection  from  that  which  Spinoza's 
*ystem  occupied.  Spinoza  saw  the  substance  with  the  eye 
of  an  undoubting  reason.  He  was  sure,  dogmatic,  abso- 
lute in  his  pretensions ;  and  being  thus  too  sure  of  him- 
self, he  lost  himself  in  contemplating  the  eternal.  We 
have  seen  how  the  study  of  the  inner  life  drew  men  away 
from  this  confidence  of  reason,  even  as  far  as  the  skepti- 
cism of  Hume.  Now  we  have  seen  how  Kant,  in  the 
midst  of  this  wilderness  of  skepticism,  built  once  more 
the  fair  spiritual  world.  Strongly  contrasted  as  are  these 
two  systems,  that  of  Spinoza  and  that  of  Kant,  both 
stand,  I  think,  for  moments,  for  elements,  in  the  higher 
thought  of  humanity.  Whether  any  synthesis  of  the 
two  is  possible,  we  have  yet  to  see.  Both  are  for  us, 
thus  far,  experiences  of  humanity,  stages  of  fortune 
through  which  man's  spirit  passes ;  and  as  for  Kant's 
stage,  he  shows,  as  you  see,  how,  amidst  the  ruins  of 
sense  and  of  doubt,  the  triumphant  reason  still  builds  its 
world  of  law  and  of  ideal  truth,  builds  because  it  is 
minded  to  do  so,  builds  by  virtue  of  its  natural  coherence 
and  its  moral  courage.  Kant's  thought,  then,  is,  in  one 
aspect,  the  thought  which  Tennyson  has  made  so  familiar 
to  our  time  :  — 

"  O  living  will  that  shalt  endure 

When  all  that  seems  shall  suffer  shock, 
Rise  in  the  spiritual  rock, 
Flow  thro'  our  deeds  and  make  them  pure, 

"  That  we  may  lift  from  out  of  dust 
A  voice  as  unto  him  that  hears, 
A  cry  above  the  conquer'd  years 
To  one  that  with  us  works,  and  trust, 

"  With  faith  that  comes  of  self-control, 
The  truths  that  never  can  be  proved 
Until  we  close  with  all  we  loved, 
And  all  we  flow  from,  soul  in  soul." 


LECTURE  V. 

FICHTE. 

Now  that  we  have  reached  and  passed  for  the  first  time 
in  our  study  the  thinker  upon  whom,  more  than  upon 
any  other  centre,  modern  thought  turns,  as  upon  a  fulcrum, 
I  am  tempted  to  pause,  at  the  beginning  of  this  lecture, 
until  I  have  suggested  still  more  of  what  Kant  means  to 
modern  thought.  It  is  not,  I  suppose,  merely  historical 
sketches  of  the  philosophers  that  you  desire  from  me. 
You  want  to  get  from  these  philosophers  such  help  as  this 
brief  study  can  suggest  towards  a  comprehension  of  the 
spiritual  problems  of  our  own  day.  So,  after  suggesting 
at  the  last  lecture  what  manner  of  man  the  historical 
Kant  was,  and  what  was  the  essence  of  his  doctrine,  I 
shall  now  try  to  draw  afresh  the  moral  from  this  part  of 
our  story. 

I. 

The  movement  from  Spinoza  to  Kant  has  taught  us  a 
lesson  which  human  thought  everywhere  has  to  learn, 
namely,  that  deeper  truth  is  too  valuable  to  be  won  by 
any  short  and  easy  process,  and  that  spiritual  history  has 
everywhere  a  decidedly  tragic  element.  We  begin  with 
our  world  simply,  in  a  childlike  faith  that  nature  and  God 
are  ours  by  right  of  our  birth.  Our  first  lesson  is  that 
they  are  both  of  them  at  all  events  far  deeper  realities 
than  we  had  supposed.  Nature  for  Spinoza,  as  for  all 
other  great  thinkers,  is  n't  the  nature  that  you  see  with 
your  eyes.  It  is  the  nature  that  you  think  with  your  rea- 
son ;  and  to  think  it  with  your  reason  you  have  to  go  be- 
hind sense  to  the  law,  to  the  substance  of  things.  Even 


136  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

so,  in  your  relations  with  God,  you  have,  according  to 
Spinoza,  to  forsake  the  naive  and  joyous  trust  in  life 
through  which  you  first  see  him.  "  When,"  says  Spinoza, 
"  I  had  learned  that  all  the  surroundings  of  life  are  vain 
and  futile,"  —  so  his  pilgrimage  began.  A  long  training, 
he  tells  us,  was  needed  ere  he  became  at  home  in  those 
solitudes  where  he  ultimately  found  God.  It  was,  he  de- 
clares, through  a  contempt  ,for  all  the  things  which  the 
multitude  seek  that  he  came  to  learn  the  true  good,  beyond 
all  that  they  seek,  namely,  the  peace  which  the  world  can 
neither  give  nor  take  away.  Encouraging  to  us  about 
Spinoza  was,  then,  that  his  tale  ended  joyously,  in  a  wis- 
dom whereby  he  was  exalted  beyond  all  the  phantom 
world  of  sense ;  but  grave  and  stern  about  him  was  his 
teaching  that  the  way  to  this  wisdom  is  so  toilsome  ;  "  for 
all  things  excellent,"  he  says,  "  are  as  difficult  as  they  are 
rare." 

This  lesson,  that  the  true  joy  of  the  spirit  is  indeed 
res  severa,  a  stern  thing,  is  still  further  deepened  in  our 
minds  by  the  struggle  of  thought  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. It  was  not  the  mere  waywardness  of  the  eighteenth- 
century  thinkers  that  forbade  them  to  accept  as  final  the 
guidance  of  even  the  intuitive  reason  to  which  Spinoza 
and  his  fellows  had  all  trusted  so  implicitly.  It  was  a 
necessary  progress  in  reflection  that  drove  these  men  to 
their  scrutiny  of  the  inner  life,  a  scrutiny  whose  tragedy 
we  found  exemplified  by  Hume's  lightly  and  cheerfully 
spoken,  but  weighty  and  gloomy  words,  "  sophistry  and 
illusion."  But  this,  at  all  events,  still  seems  to  me  sure  : 
Whoever  has  not  wandered  that  Via  Dolorosa  of  the 
eighteenth  century's  doubt  of  both  reason  and  sense 
alike,  will  never  be  able  to  knock  at  the  door  at  the  end 
of  that  way,  the  door  which  Kant  first  of  all  men  found 
opened  to  him.  It  has  opened  before  us  now  in  the  last 
discussion.  We  have  entered,  and  what  do  we  find?  We 
find,  not  what,  in  the  childlike  simplicity  of  our  first  love 


FICHTE.  137 

of  truth  we  should  have  desired,  a  God  revealed  direct  to 
sense,  or  a  divine  order  manifest  even  to  our  intuitive 
reason  ;  but  something  very  different.  We  read,  when  we 
enter  the  new  door,  as  it  were  a  mysterious  writing,  pre- 
pared by  unseen  and  unknown  hands,  a  letter,  left  for  our 
guidance  by  a  remote  and  even  unknowable  guide.  The 
letter  contains  only  the  moral  law,  and  the  word,  "  Serve 
the  unseen  God  as  if  he  were  present  with  you."  That  is 
in  the  first  place  all.  Upon  this  and  this  only,  according 
to  Kant,  our  faith  must  build.  For  this,  as  the  inner 
voice  now  tells  us,  is  the  call  that,  with  all  our  better  na- 
ture, we  are  henceforth  minded  to  obey.  Our  will  is  the 
solution.  "  Work  out  the  divine,"  says  the  new  philoso- 
phy. "  Build  anew  the  lost  spiritual  world,  which  skep- 
ticism shattered  ;  "  such  is  the  command  of  Kant's  prac- 
tical reason.  All  this  is  unquestionably  a  hard  doctrine. 
It  is  not  what  we  sought.  We  sought  peace,  and  the  phi- 
losopher has  brought  us  not  peace,  but  a  sword.  We 
sought  the  joy  of  God's  presence,  and  Kant  has  sent  us 
to  work  out  a  divine  mission  in  a  wilderness  far  remote 
from  all  absolute  insight.  And  yet,  stern  as  this  doctrine 
is,  you  must  feel  its  courage  and  its  wisdom.  After  all, 
here  is  at  least  a  part  of  the  truth.  Life  is  not  an  easy 
thing ;  the  spiritual  life  is  the  hardest  of  all  lives ;  and  of 
all  spiritual  gifts,  next  perhaps  to  charity  itself,  insight  is 
surely  the  most  difficult  to  win.  As  long  as  these  things 
are  so,  Kant's  doctrine  will  retain  its  profound  ethical  and 
religious  significance.  But,  you  will  ask,  is  this,  then,  wis- 
dom's last  word,  "  der  Weisheit  letzter  Schluss  ?  "  Well, 
for  my  part  I  do  not  think  so.  I  warn  you  indeed  that 
in  philosophy,  if  you  will  go  beyond  Kant,  you  must 
meet  new  dangers,  and  must  attempt  new  and  venture- 
some wandering.  But  for  my  part  I  love  to  wander,  far 
and  long,  and  I  hold  that  there  are  indeed  heights  yet  to 
climb  that  cleave  the  heavens  far  above  and  beyond  this 
dwelling-place  of  Kant.  If  you  will  go  with  me,  we  will  try 


138  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

also  these  new  adventures ;  but  meanwhile  I  want  to  point 
out  to  you,  ere  we  bid  farewell  to  our  greatest  modern 
thinker,  how  there  are  more  senses  than  one  in  which 
henceforth,  wherever  our  feet  carry  us,  his  wisdom  will  go 
with  us  and  direct  us.  After  all,  the  spiritual  world  that 
Kant  bade  us  build  is  the  modern  world ;  and  Kant  is  the 
true  hero  of  all  modern  thought.  If  in  one  sense  it  is 
only  by  transcending  him  and  even  by  forgetting  some  of 
his  limitations  that  we  are  to  triumph,  he  is  none  the  less 
forever  our  guide.  Kant  is,  if  you  like,  the  homely  and 
somewhat  incongruous  figure,  a  sort  of  John  Brown  of  our 
century  of  speculative  warfare.  Derided  as  a  rebel  and  an 
enemy  of  the  faith  by  many  of  his  own  time,  he  dies  be- 
fore the  modern  conflict  is  fairly  begun,  but  his  soul  goes 
marching  on  through  the  whole  of  it.  Or  to  take  another 
more  suggestive,  but  similarly  inadequate  comparison,  he 
resembles  the  hero  of  the  Heroic  Symphony,  who  is  dead 
and  buried  in  the  second  movement,  but  who  is  none  the 
less  spiritually  and  obviously  present  in  the  romantic  and 
fairy-like  outburst  of  new  life  in  the  scherzo,  and  the  joy- 
ous apotheosis  of  the  triumphant  warriors  that,  in  the 
fourth  movement,  crowns  the  symphony.  Both  these  fig- 
ures, I  grant  you,  are  somewhat  imperfect;  but  still,  I 
insist,  in  some  such  sense  Kant  will  henceforth  be  our  com- 
panion, —  the  leader  who  inspires  us  while  we  no  longer 
see  him  at  the  head,  the  man  whose  precise  system  we  no 
longer  hold,  but  who  still  is  the  creator  of  our  thought. 

I  must  indeed  have  failed  entirely  in  my  summary  of 
Kant's  own  theoretical  views,  in  the  last  lecture,  if  I  did 
not  suggest  to  you  how  full  Kant's  cautious  and  skeptical 
doctrine  is  of  motives  that  will  lead  us  beyond  him.  Re- 
member how,  for  the  first,  he  declared  the  world  of  the 
things  in  themselves  to  be  wholly  inaccessible  to  our  intel- 
lect, just  because  the  world  for  our  intellect  is  our  own 
world.  The  search  for  accessible  truth,  thinks  Kant,  is 
then  the  search  for  one's  own  personal  larger  self.  Be* 


FICHTE.  139 

cause  I  am  sane,  because  I  have  what  Kant  calls  unity  of 
apperception  in  me,  because  I  need  an  orderly  conscious- 
ness, therefore  it  is  that  the  world  of  sense  and  of  expe- 
rience has  an  outwardly  visible  good  order  about  it.  My 
understanding,  working  upon  sense,  gives  laws  to  nature, 
because  if  there  were  no  such  laws  given  by  my  under- 
standing I  should  have  no  true  inner  experience  at  all. 
The  show  world  of  experience  is  the  poem  of  our  construe* 
tive  imagination,  the  product,  then,  of  our  deepest  nature, 
of  our  largest  selves.  Moreover,  even  Kant,  with  all 
his  caution,  has  to  speak  of  that  true  self,  to  which  you 
and  I  alike  appeal,  whenever  we  discourse  about  the 
things  of  space  and  time,  as  if  it  were  something  that  we 
all  shared  in,  a  certain  universal  self,  whose  offspring  are 
we  all,  with  our  flying  moments  of  sense,  our  weak  efforts 
at  truth,  our  study  of  experience,  our  common  trust  in 
understanding.  The  world  that  we  know  is,  according  to 
Kant,  the  world,  not  of  dead  outer  things,  but  of  human 
thoughts ;  and  when  we  try  to  get  at  truth  we  are  trying 
to  find  how  the  world  in  space  and  time  would  seem  to 
the  experience  of  a  perfectly  sane  and  rational  and  far- 
seeing  onlooker ;  in  other  words,  we  are  trying,  all  of  us 
alike,  as  we  think,  to  find  out  the  mind  of  the  ideal  man. 
Well,  I  say,  that  is  the  essence  of  Kant's  thought,  re- 
stated in  one  word. 

n. 

And  now  for  a  very  natural  extension  of  this  view.  I 
suggest  this  extension  here  first  merely  as  a  possible  view, 
then  as  the  one  that  we  shall  find  history  developing.  You 
will  think  it  at  first  fantastic,  but  I  shall  not  try  as  yet  to 
defend  or  to  attack  it.  I  am  so  far  only  chronicler. 

Grant,  if  you  will,  the  existence  of  suoh  a  universe  as 
Kant  describes,  a  universe  of  numerous,  free,  but  ignorant 
moral  agents,  each  naturally  engaged  in  imaginatively 
building  up,  with  an  unconscious  but  thoughtful  art,  an 
inner  personal  world,  in  the  sense-forms  of  space  and 


140  THE   SPIRIT  OF  MODEBN  PHILOSOPHY. 

time,  and  through  numerous  forms  of  thought,  applied 
to  experience  by  their  various  constructive  imaginations. 
Each  one  of  these  moral  agents  is  bound,  by  his  manhood 
and  by  his  rationality,  to  serve  an  unseen  and  eternal 
moral  law,  and  to  believe  in  a  divine  order  that  supports 
this  law.  Such  a  universe  as  this  of  Kant,  viewed  as  it 
were  from  without,  suggests  irresistibly  an  interpretation 
which  at  first  sight  may  seem  as  romantic  as  indemonstra- 
ble, but  which  is  at  all  events  not  excluded  by  the  facts. 
Let  us  look  at  them  dispassionately,  —  these  moral  agents, 
blind  to  absolute  truth,  but  each  and  all  properly  destined 
to  be  willing  servants  of  an  unseen  order ;  world-creators, 
meanwhile,  each  and  all  of  them,  but  creators  solely  of 
their  inner  worlds,  communing  somehow  with  one  another, 
by  virtue  of  their  common  rationality,  but  cut  off  from 
things  in  themselves.  How  does  such  a  state  of  things 
appear?  Does  it  not  suggest  at  once  a  plan  of  reality 
which  might  not  yet  demonstrably,  but  just  possibly,  stand 
for  the  true  divine  order  itself  ?  Might  not  this  whole 
universe  of  the  apparently  separate  and  sense -encom- 
passed creatures  be  an  organized  spiritual  community  ?  — 
where,  like  bees  working  each  in  his  own  part  of  the  cell- 
wax,  but  all  combining  to  build  the  honey-laden  comb, 
these  creatures,  in  the  very  isolation  and  darkness  of  each 
life,  labored  together  for  the  realization,  —  yes,  I  mean  it 
literally,  —  for  the  very  expressing  and  constituting  of 
God's  life ;  a  divine  life,  I  repeat,  of  infinite  complexity, 
whose  purposes  were  so  manifold  that  an  endless  number 
of  agents  might  be  needed  to  embody  them ;  whose  ideals 
were  so  lofty  that  only  such  courage  and  fidelity  and  de- 
votion as  finite  beings,  in  this  ignorance  and  isolation, 
would  have  opportunity  to  develop,  could  serve  the  stern 
and  noble  ends  of  the  divine  decrees.  Suppose,  in  a 
word,  that  the  infinite  whole  made  up  of  these  finite  lives 
were  itself  the  divine  life.  From  such  a  point  of  view. 
which  I  now  suggest  only  by  way  of  a  pure  hypothesis, 


FICHTE.  141 

could  not  this  Kantian  universe  be  both  interpreted,  and, 
after  a  fashion,  even  justified  ?  To  be  sure,  by  such  an 
interpretation  it  would  be  indeed  transformed.  In  my 
opening  lecture  I  ventured  to  suggest  to  you  the  doctrine 
that  the  universe,  despite  its  seemingly  stubborn  physical 
fixity,  is  a  live  thing,  an  infinite  spirit.  According  to 
Kant,  the  world  of  the  natural  order,  in  space  and  in 
time,  cannot  be  thus  alive,  simply  because,  apart  from  our 
sense  and  our  constructive  imagination,  this  natural  order 
has  no  existence.  Spinoza's  substance,  then,  would  be  for 
Kant  a  mere  mirage ;  but  now,  as  you  see,  the  true  uni- 
verse for  Kant  consists  of  perceiving  moral  agents,  and  of 
the  dim  and  shadowy  things  in  themselves,  and  of  what 
the  practical  reason  postulates ;  and  that  is  all.  If  this 
be  so,  however,  do  we  care  much  for  those  shadowy  things 
in  themselves?  Perhaps  they  are  n't  worth  knowing. 
Perhaps  they  even  do  not  exist  at  all.  Our  inner  world 
does  n't  contain  them.  They  are  no  object  of  natural 
science.  You  can't  weigh  them  or  measure  them,  much 
less  see  them.  Perhaps  they  are,  as  Hume  would  say, 
"  sophistry  and  illusion."  What,  then,  remains  to  us  ? 
Why,  precisely  this :  the  world  of  the  natural  order,  which, 
mirage  though  it  be,  is  the  very  mirror  of  our  sanity,  and 
is  therefore  useful  enough ;  this,  and  the  world  of  our 
fellow-men,  the  world  of  practical  and  therefore  of  spirit- 
ual relationships,  the  world  of  live  beings,  ignorant,  but 
rational  like  ourselves.  With  these  we  live,  we  act ;  we 
seek  to  realize  through  them  the  moral  order  ;  we  respect 
their  rights,  we  love  them,  we  treat  them  as  God's  chil- 
dren. But  see :  perhaps,  in  dealing  with  them,  we  touch 
the  divine  order  itself.  Perhaps,  to  use  a  more  modern 
phrase,  God  simply  differentiates  himself  into  the  forms 
of  all  these  live  beings,  who  may  be,  for  all  we  know,  as 
numerous,  and  as  various  in  their  degrees  of  loftiness,  as 
the  stars  and  the  atoms  of  physics.  Perhaps  in  the  very 
depths  of  their  finite  ignorance  he  does  n't  quite  lose  him- 


142  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

self ;  perhaps  his  transcendent  wisdom  consists  simply  in 
knowing,  in  establishing,  in  harmonizing  their  relation- 
ships, so  that,  as  Schiller  says,  "  while  no  one  of  them  is 
his  equal,  his  own  endlessness  foams  up  to  him  from  out 
this  beaker  of  the  infinite  world  of  spirits."  Then,  indeed, 
their  lonely  heroism  is  his  triumph  ;  their  seeming  isola- 
tion is  simply  the  manner  in  which  he  realizes,  through 
them,  the  organization  of  his  own  life ;  their  diversity  and 
ignorance  are  merely  his  way  of  expressing  the  unity  in 
variety,  the  completeness  in  differentiation,  of  his  own 
manifold  nature.  If  so,  then  God  is  n't  somewhere  far  off 
there,  outside  the  world,  so  that  we  feel  in  vain  for  him 
amongst  the  dead  and  dismal  things  in  themselves.  God 
is  in  you,  just  in  so  far  as  you  are  alive  and  hearty  and 
humane ;  in  your  human  relationships,  just  so  far  as  they 
are  devoted,  loyal,  organic ;  in  your  very  ignorance,  in  so 
far  as  it  enables  you  to  be  heroic ;  in  your  very  finiteness, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  a  condition  for  your  accomplishment  of 
a  definite  task.  God,  outside  of  such  a  world  of  finite 
agents,  would  rejoice  only  in  his  empty  infinity  ;  he  would 
be,  as  Schiller  also  said,  in  the  poem  from  which  I  have 
just  quoted, — he  would  be  "  friendless,"  he  would  "  suffer 
lack."  To  be  the  God  in  reality,  he  would  have  to  enter 
into  finite  form,  and  preserve  his  infinity  merely  through 
the  unity,  the  organization,  the  conscious  spiritual  form  of 
his  universe  of  active  creatures.  We  were  wrong  then, 
when  we  sought  him  as  it  were  afar  off,  in  the  mirage 
of  space  and  time,  or  even  in  the  laws  of  outer  nature  as 
Spinoza  did.  We  were  even  wrong  to  say,  as  Kant  said  : 
We  never  take  hold  of  his  real  self,  we  only  postulate 
him.  The  fact  is  that,  in  our  spiritual  life,  we  already 
possess  him,  are  flesh  of  his  flesh,  are  one  with  him,  just 
in  so  far  as  we  have  vitality,  courage,  loyalty,  wealth, 
strength,  sanity,  of  will  and  of  understanding.  We  know 
of  him  just  so  much  as  we  are.  And  we  are  of  him  j'ust 
so  much  as  we  are  morally  worthy  to  be. 


FICHTE.  143 

This  is  the  interpretation  which  dawns  upon  us  when 
we  reflect  awhile  upon  Kant's  universe.  Mystery  en- 
shrouds his  world.  The  curtain  of  sense  is  "  so  thick  !  " 
Such  darkness  is  for  us  beyond  it !  We  know  so  little. 
We  have  nothing  left  us  but  morality ;  and  that  is  just  a 
postulate.  But  no,  is  this  so  little,  after  all?  Suppose 
that  the  curtain  itself  were  the  picture,  that  the  dark  mys- 
tery lay  simply  in  this,  that  we  have  refused  to  recognize 
as  divine  so  much  of  God's  own  essence  as  we  ourselves 
possess,  and  have  failed  to  see  how  our  life,  just  in  so  far 
as  it  is  spiritual,  is,  not  a  postulating,  but  a  realizing  of 
the  divine  life.  Suppose  all  this  to  be  no  mere  hypothe- 
sis, but  a  certainty.  Would  it  not  transform  our  philo- 
sophy? Well,  I  suggest  here  this  transformation,  because, 
as  an  idea,  it  was  precisely  the  transformation  of  the 
Kantian  doctrine  which  was  the  common  undertaking  of 
the  great  post-Kantian  German  idealists,  Fichte,  Schel- 
ling,  and  Hegel. 

Philosophy  is  full  of  surprises.  Just  when  you  think 
that  the  road  is  ended  against  a  dark  and  impassable  wall, 
the  door  opens,  as  it  opened  to  Kant.  And  just  when 
you  think  again  that  Kant's  discovery  is  the  end,  a  new 
life  for  the  first  time  begins.  This  is  the  new  life  of 
modern  idealism.  It  accepts  in  one  sense  Kant's  result. 
Yes,  it  goes  further  in  negation  than  even  he  went.  He 
held  fast  by  the  things  in  themselves,  whose  existence  he 
acknowledged,  although  he  could  know  nothing  about 
them.  The  later  German  idealists  say  frankly  that  they 
care  nothing  for  the  things  in  themselves,  and  either 
doubt  or  deny  whether  there  are  any  such  things  at  all. 
Kant,  however,  paused  at  the  threshold  of  the  show-world. 
Beyond,  he  said,  dwells,  as  we  must  faithfully  believe,  a 
God  whom  we  serve,  but  who  is  forever  the  unknown  God. 
The  later  idealists  say :  Indeed,  the  deepest  truth  is  the 
truth  of  the  manly  will  to  act  morally ;  but  then  this  will 
itself  embodies  in  each  of  us  a  portion  of  the  divine  per 


144  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

sonality.  This  is,  so  to  speak,  the  real  presence  of  God  in 
us,  to  wit,  just  as  much  of  our  own  nature  as  is  holy.  Our 
holiness,  if  we  have  any  rag  of  holiness  about  us,  much 
more  if  we  are  filled  with  heroism  and  with  reasonable 
service,  is,  in  its  own  inner  quality,  divine.  As  for  God, 
his  life  is  just  this  eternal  sacrifice  of  his  infinity  by 
entering  into  the  rational  lives  of  a  world  of  limited,  but 
moral  beings.  For  in  this  sacrifice  he  wins  himself.  He 
enjoys  his  peace,  not  apart  from  the  world, 

"  Where  never  creeps  a  cloud  nor  moves  a  wind, 
Nor  ever  falls  the  least  white  star  of  snow 
Nor  ever  lowest  moan  of  thunder  rolls, 
Nor  sound  of  human  sorrow  mounts." 

No,  his  peace  is  the  peace  of  triumphing  in  the  midst  of 
our  world  of  agony  and  of  passion,  as  the  tragic  poet 
triumphs  even  while  losing  himself  in  the  sufferings  of  his 
own  creations.  |  God's  life  is  simply  all  life,  and  it  is 
not  concealed,  but  revealed  by  our  own  lives.  I  God  lives 
in  every  kindly  friendship,  in  every  noble  deed,  in  every 
well-ordered  society,  in  every  united  people,  in  every 
sound  law,  in  every  wise  thought.  He  has  no  life  beyond 
such  rationality.  His  personality  is  just  this,  the  com- 
munion, the  intercourse,  the  organization  of  all  finite  per- 
sons. Here,  you  see,  is  in  one  sense  indeed  a  new  notion 
of  personality.  A  person  beyond  our  whole  world,  even 
of  morality,  was  what  we  had  hoped  for.  The  new  doc- 
trine declares  that  the  infinite  one  pervades  the  whole 
finite  world  of  spirits,  and  simply  lives  by  constituting,  by 
unifying,  and  by  enjoying,  this  very  life  of  ours  and  of  all 
our  brethren,  the  rational  beings,  wherever  and  whatever 
they  may  be.  Thus  indeed  we  are  limited,  and  may  be 
even  transient  embodiments  of  God's  life ;  but  we  our- 
selves, in  so  far  as  we  make  for  unity  and  for  righteous- 
ness, are  in  nature  one  with  him.  New  is  the  doctrine,  I 
say,  namely,  as  a  reflective  speculation  in  modern  thought. 
But  in  one  sense,  as  these  idealists  are  never  weary  of 


FICHTE.  145 

pointing  out,  it  is  a  very  old  doctrine ;  it  is  the  very  core 
of  Christian  faith.  When  Paul  said  to  the  faithful,  "  Ye 
are  dead,  and  your  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God  ;  "  when 
the  fourth  Gospel  makes  the  Logos  say,  "  I  am  the  vine, 
ye  are  the  branches;"  when  the  whole  doctrine  of  the 
church  rested  upon  the  idea  of  a  God  revealed  in  the 
flesh ;  when  even  a  simpler  and  more  primitive  Christian 
tradition,  that  of  the  first  synoptic  Gospel,  represents  the 
final  judgment  as  dependent  upon  the  principle,  "  Inas- 
much as  ye  did  it  unto  the  least  of  these,  ye  did  it  unto 
me ;  "  when,  finally,  the  deep  mysticism  of  the  historical 
church  represented  the  faithful  as  actually  feeding  upon 
God's  very  essence  and  living  thereby,  —  what  doctrine 
was  this  but  the  very  teaching  upon  which  rests  the  new 
philosophy  which  now  undertakes  to  transform  Kant's 
dark  world  of  faithful  and  isolated  beings  into  the  world 
of  God's  own  realization  and  presence?  These  moral 
agents  of  Kant's  world  are  not  isolated,  for,  ignorant  as 
they  are,  they  work  together.  And  what  better  revelation 
of  a  divine  order  than  a  world  where  spirits  can  com- 
mune and  can  work  together? 

Once  more,  as  you  see,  the  philosopher  invents  nothing ; 
he  only  reflects.  In  reflection  he  has  cast  down  the  dog- 
mas of  a  blind  faith ;  in  reflection  he  builds  anew  their 
rational  and  eternal1  significance.  So,  at  least,  these  Ger- 
man idealists  hold.  As  for  me,  I  am  so  far,  as  I  just 
observed,  a  mere  chronicler.  This  doctrine,  too,  may  be 
an  imperfect  speculation.  I  am  not  now  defending  it, 
but  only  expounding  it.  As  expositor  I  present  it  now 
before  you.  So  far  we  find  it  as  an  hypothesis.  It  needs 
proof.  Perhaps  it  will  need  further  alteration  and  adjust- 
ment. At  all  events,  here  is  for  us  a  new  experience  in 
philosophy,  namely,  the  very  essence  of  Christianity  em- 
bodied in  a  speculative  theory. 


146          /  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

III. 

Meanwhile,  the  form  which  this  doctrine  takes  in  Ger- 
man thought  is  one  dependent  upon  the  special  conditions 
of  a  very  charming  and  a  very  wayward  age,  the  age  of 
German  classical  and  romantic  literature.  Whether  or 
no  you  find  this  sort  of  speculation  in  itself  satisfactory, 
you  will  at  all  events  be  interested  in  watching  with  me, 
during  the  rest  of  this  lecture  and  during  the  next,  some 
of  the  more  obvious  and  immediately  human  aspects  of  a 
time  so  full  of  fire,  of  imagination,  of  productiveness,  of 
faults,  of  wanderings,  and  of  glory.  But  let  us  proceed 
at  once  to  the  man  who  first  embodied  this  new  idealistic 
doctrine  in  a  series  of  writings  wherein  the  spontaneity, 
the  eloquence,  the  confidence,  the  complexity,  and  the 
fragmentariness  of  the  work  done  reflect  very  well  the 
character  of  this  period.  I  refer  to  Fichte. 

Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte  is  the  first  of  the  great  succes- 
sors of  Kant.  He  was  a  man  three  years  younger  than 
Schiller,  thirteen  years  younger  than  Goethe,  and  thirty- 
eight  years  younger  than  Kant  himself.  The  story  of  his 
life  is  one  of  ardor,  poverty,  high  aims,  brilliant  literary 
success,  bitter  conflicts,  and  an  untimely  death  in  his 
country's  service.  For  at  the  close  of  his  career,  during 
the  great  war  of  liberation,  in  1813,  he  and  his  devoted 
wife  busied  themselves  in  the  encouragement  of  the  war- 
riors and  in  the  care  of  the  wounded.  Fichte,  as  you  see, 
had  just  passed  the  age  of  fifty.  His  wife,  while  nursing 
wounded  soldiers,  was  stricken  with  typhus  fever.  She 
recovered,  but  the  contagion  had  already  passed  to  Fichte, 
to  whom  it  proved  fatal,  in  January,  1814.  A  nobler 
death,  in  a  more  heroic  time,  was  scarcely  possible  to  a 
professor  of  philosophy  and  a  patriot.  Fichte  was  spared 
the  pain  of  seeing  the  darker  years  of  national  stagnation 
and  of  illiberalism  in  Germany,  that  followed  the  triumph 
over  Napoleon.  And  for  the  rest,  his  work  was  in  one 


FICHTE.  147 

sense  already  done.  He  had  influenced  younger  men  who 
by  that  time  had  already  transcended  him. 

This  work  had  been,  however,  manifold  and  exacting. 
Fichte  had  a  temperament  at  once  logical  and  enthusias- 
tic. The  struggle  between  a  keen  and  subtle  intellect  and 
a  warm  and  imaginative  emotional  nature,  had  joined  it- 
self with  outer  hindrances  to  make  his  early  years  event- 
ful and  arduous.  The  son  of  a  poor  weaver,  and  one  of  a 
large  family  of  children,  Fichte  chanced  to  attract,  whila 
yet  a  boy,  the  kindly  attention  of  a  nobleman,  who 
adopted  him,  showed  him  a  little  of  the  great  world,  and 
then,  suddenly  dying,  left  him  a  penniless  youth,  only  the 
more  keenly  ashamed,  under  such  circumstances,  of  his 
poverty.  At  the  university  he  supported  himself  by 
private  teaching,  was  more  than  once  near  to  despair  in 
his  neediness,  and  at  length,  after  graduation,  became  a 
Hofmeister  in  a  Zurich  family.  While  here,  in  1788,  he 
met  his  future  wife,  a  certain  Johanna  Rahn,  a  niece  of 
the  poet  Klopstock.  They  were  soon  betrothed,  but  were 
too  poor  to  marry  until  1793. 

Fiehte's  since  published  love-letters  to  his  betrothed  are 
described,  by  those  who  have  read  them  through  (I  have 
not),  as  somewhat  pedantic  —  the  natural  product  of  a 
mind  conscientious,  learned,  but  impulsive,  and  so  far  at 
once  flighty  and  even  a  little  despondent.  He  is  fond  of 
accusing  himself  of  many  faults,  laments  his  restlessness 
and  unsteadiness  of  ideas  and  plans,  knows  no  guiding 
star  but  her  love,  and  wonders  what  Providence  can  be 
meaning  with  him.  Meanwhile,  during  this  period  of  his 
betrothal,  he  changed  his  position  often  and  traveled 
much,  looking  for  a  permanent  occupation,  —  a  project- 
maker  and  an  unpromising  wanderer.  In  philosophy  he 
was  so  far  a  sort  of  amateur  Spinozist,  and  occupied  a 
position  to  which  he  later  looked  back  as  one  of  darkness 
and  of  the  gall  of  bitterness.  Suddenly  a  change  came. 
It  was  1790,  and  he  was  now  twenty-eight  years  old. 


148  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

While  in  Leipzig  he  undertook  to  give  a  young  man  pri- 
vate lessons  in  philosophy,  and  to  that  end  took  up  for 
the  first  time  the  study  of  Kant.  Very  soon  he  wrote 
to  Fraulein  Rahn  in  an  entirely  new  vein.  It  is  a  won- 
derful philosophy,  this  of  Kant,  he  asserts.  It  tames  a 
man's  wild  imagination  ;  it  gives  one  "  an  indescribable 
elevation  above  all  earthly  affairs."  "  I  have  obtained 
from  it,"  he  continues,  "  a  nobler  ideal.  I  don't  concern 
myself  so  much  now  with  outward  things ;  I  am  busied 
within  myself.  Thence  has  come  to  me  a  peace  that  I 
have  never  before  known.  In  the  midst  of  my  perplexing 
material  situation,  I  have  been  enjoying  the  most  blessed 
days  of  my  experience.  I  mean  to  devote  to  this  philoso- 
phy at  least  some  years  of  my  life.  It  is  above  all  con- 
ception a  difficult  doctrine,  and  it  deserves  to  be  made 
easier.  Its  basis,  to  be  sure,  is  a  mass  of  head-splitting 
speculations  that  have  no  immediate  bearing  on  human 
life,  but  the  consequences  are  vastly  important  to  an  age 
which,  like  ours,  is  morally  corrupt  to  the  very  source ; 
and  one  would  deserve  well  of  his  time  if  he  made  these 
consequences  luminous  to  the  world.  Tell  your  dear 
father  that  he  and  I  used  to  err  in  our  investigations 
about  the  necessity  of  all  man's  acts.  ...  I  have  found 
out  now  that  man's  will  is  free,  and  that  not  happiness, 
but  worthiness  is  the  end  of  our  being.  And  I  ask  your 
pardon,  too,  that  I  used  to  teach  you  false  doctrine  about 
these  things.  Henceforth  believe  your  own  feeling,  even 
if  you  can't  refute  a  sophist." 

One  might  wonder  whether  this  confession  to  Johanna 
Rahn,  of  the  superlative  blessedness  of  days  passed  out  of 
her  company,  and  alone  with  the  "  Critique  of  Pure  Rea- 
son," might  not  have  made  her  a  trifle  jealous  of  Kant ; 
but  in  fact,  as  she  was  a  person  of  both  maturity  and  dis- 
cretion, being  four  years  the  senior  of  Fichte  himself,  she 
wrote  him  that,  since  after  all  he  appeared  unable  to  earn 
his  living,  and  since  her  father's  means  were  now  apparently 


FICHTE.  149 

sufficient,  he  might  return  to  Zurich  and  marry  her,  and 
then  devote  himself  to  philosophy  at  his  leisure.  A  curi- 
ous wavering  followed  in  the  mind  and  conduct  of  Kant's 
new  disciple.  He  wrote  to  his  brother  that  Fraulein 
liahn  was  indeed  the  noblest  soul  in  the  world,  but  that 
for  one  thing  he  himself  was  a  wanderer,  an  independent 
creature,  and  that  for  the  rest  something  new  had  just 
come  into  his  life,  which  seemed  to  drive  him  out  to  con- 
quer the  whole  world  afresh.  Marriage  would  clip  a 
man's  wings,  would  imprison  him  yonder  in  Switzerland, 
would  perhaps  hinder  his  philosophizing  in  this  wondrous 
and  novel  way.  He  felt  restless ;  he  was  even  often  dis- 
posed to  flee  altogether  and  never  write  to  her  again. 

To  Johanna  herself,  Fichte's  letters  expressed  of  course 
nothing  of  these  rebellious  sentiments,  and  I  mention 
them  only  to  suggest  a  little  of  the  ferment  which  in  this 
needy  young  tutor's  soul  was  then  under  way.  He 
must  do  everything,  —  teach  Johanna  the  new  insight, 
marry,  cease  this  wavering  that  had  made  him  like  a 
wave  of  the  sea  ;  and  yet,  he  must  also  convert  the  whole 
world  to  the  Kantian  doctrine,  in  all  its  spirituality  and 
earnestness ;  he  must  save  his  countrymen  in  this  time  of 
revolution  and  of  corruption ;  he  must  wander,  work, 
think  incessantly.  One  has  here,  you  see,  something  of 
the  typical  erudite  German  of  the  story-books,  crude  and 
elevated  in  one  —  lover,  world-stormer,  sentimentalist,  and 
cynic,  all  at  the  same  time.  For  Fichte,  too,  was  occasion- 
ally a  bit  of  a  cynic.  "  When  I  met  Johanna,"  he  once 
writes  to  his  brother,  "  my  heart  was  empty.  I  just  let 
her  love  me.  I  didn't  care  much  about  it."  "Dear 
one,"  he  writes  to  her  in  all  sincerity,  at  about  the  same 
time,  "take  me  with  all  my  faults.  What  a  creature  I  am  I 
Men  have  attributed  to  me  fixity  of  character,  but  I  have 
always  been  merely  the  creature  of  circumstances.  You 
have  the  stronger  soul.  Give  fixity  to  my  waverings." 1 

1  The  present  sketch  is  dependent  largely  upon  that  of  Julian 


1,00  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY,, 

In  this  state  of  mind  Fichte  journeyed,  in  the  way  of 
business,  to  accept  a  tutor's  position  at  Warsaw.  He 
failed  there  to  give  satisfaction,  because  his  French  pro- 
nunciation was  poor,  and  on  his  way  back  he  called  upon 
Kant  at  Konigsberg,  in  July,  1791.  The  aged,  prudent, 
and,  as  you  will  remember,  highly  economical  philosopher 
regarded  this  reverent,  fiery,  but  obviously  impecunious 
young  disciple  with  a  certain  suspicion,  and  received  his 
confidences  coolly.  The  rebuff  only  heated  Fichte  the 
more.  He  tarried  in  Konigsberg  two  months,  in  order 
during  that  time  to  write,  for  presentation  to  Kant,  a  work 
on  religious  philosophy,  which,  once  finished,  proved  to  be 
so  thoroughly  in  Kant's  spirit  that,  when  in  the  spring  of 
the  next  year  the  book  was  published  anonymously,  it  was 
very  generally  hailed  by  Kant's  admirers  as  a  new  pro- 
duction of  the  master's  own  genius.  Kant  himself  had  to 
correct  this  misapprehension,  and  in  doing  so  named,  and 
now  with  warm  praise,  the  real  author.  Thus  at  one 
stroke,  as  it  were,  Fichte1  s  career  was  made.  He  had  won 
the  great  philosopher's  approval  and  the  ear  of  the  public 
at  the  same  time.  Within  another  year  he  returned  to 
Zurich.  He  was  at  length  famous,  and,  as  his  beloved 
was  now,  by  chance,  even  more  obviously  in  comfortable 
circumstances  than  she  had  been  at  the  time  when  she 
wrote  the  aforementioned  highly  practical  letter,  there 
was  nothing  further  to  hinder  his  marriage,  which  took 
place  in  October,  1793,  and  remained  to  the  end  a  very 
happy  one.  In  1794  came  the  call  to  the  University  of 
Jena,  which  was  then  at  the  centre  of  the  mental  life  of 
Germany. 

IV. 

Fichte's  career  has  thus  been  suggested  to  you  through 
a  sketch  of  its  first  important  crisis.  There  is  the  same 
interesting  union  of  the  great,  the  ardent,  the  thoughtful, 

Schmidt,  as  given  in  the  fifth  edition  of  his  Geschichte  d.  deutschen 
Literatur  sett  Lessing's  Tod,  vol.  i.  p.  347  sqq. 


FICHTE.  151 

and,  if  one  wants  to  be  frank,  of  the  petty  also,  in  the 
rest  of  his  life.  Accused  of  atheism  in  1799,  the  heroic, 
but  lamentably  indiscreet  man  replied  to  an  unjust  charge 
in  so  violent  and  unhappy  a  fashion  as  to  make  him 
thenceforth  impossible  at  Jena,  so  that  even  the  chief 
patron  of  liberal  culture  and  free  thought  in  Germany, 
Goethe's  own  duke  at  Weimar,  had  regretfully,  and  by 
Goethe's  personal  advice,  to  dismiss  him  from  his  chair. 
Then  followed,  however,  the  Berlin  career,  with  its  noble 
ending.  Later  years,  indeed,  in  some  respects  mellowed 
Fichte ;  but  to  the  end  he  was  always  a  fighter,  and  a 
man  of  books  as  well,  with  all  the  faults  of  both  these 
species,  with  a  temperament  whose  lofty  heroism  and  true 
piety  could  not  save  it  from  an  appearance  of  polemical 
narrowness  and  furious  self-assertion  whenever  he  was  in 
an  actual  conflict  with  any  man  or  party.  In  argument 
Fichte  is,  so  to  speak,  all  temperament.  His  dialectic  is 
indeed  keen,  his  analysis  is  deep  and  searching,  his  sense 
of  the  unity  of  all  science  is  profoundly  rational ;  but 
deeper  than  all  is  the  strong  sense  of  his  own  personality, 
the  love  of  making  articulate  his  own  character,  which  led 
him  to  say  with  truth,  but  with  a  peculiar  and  individual 
strength  of  accent :  "  What  system  of  philosophy  you 
hold  depends  wholly  upon  what  manner  of  man  you  are." 
Hence,  in  all  his  lengthy  and  frequently  very  technical 
writings,  he  after  all  never  merely  argues  ;  he  appeals  to 
more  than  your  understanding ;  he  appeals  to  your  honor, 
to  your  dignity  of  soul,  to  agree  with  his  system.  He 
would  not  merely  convince  you ;  he  would  convert  you 
from  an  error  which,  as  he  feels,  shows  in  you  a  defect  of 
character.  Goethe  used  to  say  that,  by  way  of  amuse- 
ment, he  occasionally  read  Fichte,  "  just  to  let  myself  be 
abused  by  him  for  a  little  while."  Meanwhile,  Fichte 
abused  frankly  his  own  early  blindness,  before  Kant  came 
into  his  soul,  with  all  the  ardor  of  the  ransomed  convert. 
What  Kant  had  ransomed  him  from  was  Spinozism,  and 


152  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

the  dread  bondage  of  the  outer  world.  What  Fichte  con« 
ceived  himself  to  have  learned  from  Kant  was  therefore 
this :  The  rational  subject  builds  its  own  world,  and  the 
dead  external  world  is  naught.  What  Fichte  added  to 
Kant,  as  he  went  on,  was  however  somewhat  elaborate, 
and  constitutes,  along  with  the  strictly  Kantian  elements, 
his  own  system,  which  is  almost  universally  but  rather 
inaptly  named  "  Subjective  idealism." 

Let  me  state  it,  too,  first  in  rough  outline,  then  a  little 
more  systematically.  As  everybody  knows,  Fichte  ac- 
cepted Kant's  result  in  so  far  as  Kant  said  that  space  and 
time  are  facts  only  for  our  consciousness,  and  that  we 
can't  know  any  things  in  themselves  beyond  us.  Only 
Fichte  went  further.  He  denied  that  there  can  exist  any 
things  in  themselves  beyond  consciousness  at  all.  The 
world  that  we  spiritual  beings  know,  however  hard  and 
fast  it  may  seem,  however  helplessly  we  ourselves  may 
individually  be  subjected  to  its  facts,  is  still,  in  the  last 
analysis,  there  only  in  so  far  as  we  recognize  it  as  there 
for  us.  The  world,  then,  is  the  world  that  the  self  makes. 
So  Fichte's  chief  principles  are  these :  (1)  All  philosophy 
has  its  source  in  one  primal  truth,  namely,  the  truth  that 
living  and  voluntary  selves  freely  choose  to  assert  them- 
selves, and  so  to  build  up  their  whole  organized  world ; 
(2)  The  moral  law  is,  in  consequence  of  this,  really  prior 
to  all  other  knowledge,  and  conditions  all  that  we  theo- 
retically know.  For  as  you  see,  knowing  a  world  is  for 
Fichte  making  a  world,  consciously  recognizing  the  truth, 
acting  then  in  this  way  or  in  that.  But  the  law  of  action, 
the  moral  law,  thus  becomes  for  Fichte  the  basis  of  all 
theoretical  knowing  ;  (3)  The  apparently  fatal  outer 
world  about  us  is  simply,  in  Fichte's  bold  and  stirringly 
fantastic  words,  "  the  stu-fif,  the  material  (the  opportun- 
ity), for  our  duty,  made  manifest  to  our  senses  ('  das  ver- 
sinnlichte  Material  unserer  PJlicht ')."  Beyond  all  this, 
however,  in  the  fourth  place,  Fichte  went  later,  when  he 


FICHTE.  153 

developed  more  clearly  a  doctrine  obviously  latent  and 
implied  in  his  earlier  works,  namely,  the  doctrine  that 
the  universe  of  the  self -asserting  and  world  -  creating 
selves,  each  of  whom  sees  about  him  in  daily  life  simply 
the  very  stuff  and  fibre  of  his  moral  law  made  manifest 
to  his  senses  as  an  opportunity  for  his  moral  work,  — 
that  this  universe  of  selves,  I  say,  constitutes  the  life  and 
embodiment  of  the  one  true  and  infinite  Reason,  God's 
will,  which,  itself  supreme  and  far  above  the  level  of  our 
finite  personality,  uses  even  our  conscious  lives  and  wills 
as  part  of  its  own  life.  This  doctrine  Fichte  himself,  in 
one  of  his  later  works  ("  The  Way  to  the  Blessed  Life  "), 
identifies  with  the  teaching  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  Ac- 
cording to  this  view,  you  see,  God,  in  so  far  as  he  reveals 
himself,  is  indeed  the  vine,  and  we,  in  so  far  as  we  truly 
live,  are  the  sap-laden  and  fruitful  branches.  The  only 
real  world  is  the  world  of  conscious  activity,  and  so  of 
spiritual  relationships,  of  society,  of  serious  business,  of 
friendship,  of  love,  of  law,  of  national  existence,  —  in  a 
word,  of  work ;  as  for  matter,  that  is  the  mere  show  stuff 
that  is  needed  to  embody,  to  express,  to  give  form,  sta- 
bility, outline,  as  it  were,  to  our  moral  work. 

I  may  put  Fichte's  theory  of  the  external  world  in  yet 
another  fashion,  thus :  In  company  with  another  spirit, 
so  Fichte  thinks,  I  can  only  work  in  case  he  and  I  have 
a  sense  world  in  common.  Hence  our  common  devotion, 
our  social  enthusiasm,  our  duty,  requires  of  us  all  that 
we  try  to  embody  our  ideals  in  the  same  sense  forms.  If 
we  succeed,  we  all  see  the  same  houses  and  streets,  the 
same  people  moving,  the  same  flags  waving.  Seeing  thus 
in  common,  we  can  work  in  common.  If  we  did  not  find 
out  how  to  work  in  common,  we  should  express  the  vague- 
ness of  our  immoral  isolation  in  the  separateness  of  our 
various  sense  worlds ;  in  other  words,  we  should  dream  or 
be  delirious.  I  dream  when  I  am  not  at  work.  When  I 
am  strenuously  active  I  am  awake ;  and  therefore,  in  so  far 


154  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

as  I  am  effectively  righteous,  I  see  the  same  stuff  that  my 
fellow-workers  see.  Matter  is  thus  the  mere  condition  of 
our  common  tasks.  Each  one  of  us  creates  it  for  himself. 
We  create  together  and  in  agreement,  in  so  far  as  we 
want  to  toil  for  a  common  purpose.  And  the  rationality 
of  the  divine  plan  secures  to  us  a  power  thus  to  create 
and  to  work  together.  Meanwhile,  good  and  bad  men, 
noble  and  base  men,  strong  and  weak  men,  really  do  not 
see  precisely  the  same  sense  world.  The  seeming  outer 
world  for  any  man  actually  varies  with  his  moral  percep- 
tions. The  sense  world  is  saner  and  more  orderly  for 
the  cultivated  man  than  for  the  savage,  for  the  good 
man  than  for  the  man  absorbed  in  the  pleasure  of  the 
moment,  for  the  wise  man  than  for  the  fool.  And  thus 
the  doctrine  conforms,  thinks  Fichte,  to  the  actual  facts. 
"The  necessity,"  says  the  philosopher,  "with  which  the 
belief  in  the  reality  of  phenomena  forces  itself  upon  us 
is  a  moral  necessity,  the  only  one  that  is  possible  for  a 
moral  being ;  herein  our  duty  reveals  itself."  And  thus 
we  have,  in  the  barest  outline,  the  famous  "  subjective 
idealism  "  of  Fichte.  One  might  better  call  it  "  ethical 
idealism"  in  its  extremest  expression.  So  much,  then, 
for  my  first  rough  summary.  And  now  what  shall  we  say 
of  this  sort  of  idealism  ? 

A  bold,  yes,  an  extravagant  doctrine!  you  will  say. 
Kant's  things  in  themselves  have  gone  out  of  this  world 
of  Fichte.  Yet  somehow  we  at  first  scarcely  miss  them. 
Kant,  to  be  sure,  felt  quite  out  of  place  in  Fichte's  fantas- 
tic universe,  and  publicly  expressed  his  repentance,  ere  he 
died,  that  he  had  ever  encouraged  this  young  disciple  so 
freely.  "  Save  me  from  my  friends,"  cried  Kant,  very 
sincerely,  in  a  printed  note  of  explanation.  The  transfor- 
mation lay  of  course  in  Fichte's  determination  not  merely 
to  do  away  with  Kant's  things  in  themselves,  but  to  see 
\  at  once  into  the  very  heart  of  the  moral  order,  whose 
"^supremacy  Kant  had  only  postulated.  If  you  now  ask 


FICHTE.  155 

me,  however,  whether,  as  modern  idealist,  I  myself  accept 
Fichte's  statement  as  the  final  truth  of  the  doctrine,  I 
respond  of  course  at  once  that  I  do  not.  This  is  n't  the 
idealism  that  has,  as  idealism  ought  to  have,  a  deep  and 
genuine  respect  for  the  natural  order  and  for  experience. 
Fichte's  easy  disposal  of  the  whole  external  and  natural 
order  is,  indeed,  not  only  bold,  but  quite  unwarranted 
The  modern  student  of  nervous  physiology,  of  the  facts 
of  evolution,  and  of  the  interdependence  of  the  physical 
and  moral  worlds  generally,  is  not  likely  to  find  Fichte's 
"  ethical  idealism "  anywhere  near  to  the  last  word. 
More  philosophical  surprises  await  us  hereafter ;  upon 
newer  insights  the  thought  of  to-day  is  based ;  and  in 
some,  not  in  all  respects,  the  whole  later  German  ideal- 
istic movement,  which  Fichte  began,  represents  to  my 
mind,  as  you  will  later  see,  a  circuit  to  one  side  of  the 
main  stream  of  modern  thought.  Only,  as  we  shall  learn, 
from  this  circuit  thought  returns  enriched.  This  expe- 
rience also  will  have  its  part  in  the  outcome  ;  and  he  who 
lias  not  once  fairly  viewed  Fichte's  universe  will  see  less 
than  he  ought  to  see  in  the  universe  of  to-day. 

As  an  experience,  then,  as  one  more  of  the  many  ways 
of  looking  at  truth,  I  want  you  to  consider  this  doctrine. 
Think  of  Fichte,  when  you  read  or  hear  of  him,  as  one 
embodiment  only  of  that  beautiful,  that  profoundly  wise 
and  instructive,  waywardness  of  German  thought  and 
sentiment,  which  we  all  know  so  well  to-day  in  song,  in 
story,  and  in  the  drama,  as  well  as  in  the  other  arts.  It 
is  this  same  waywardness  that  has  given  us  "  Faust,"  and 
Heine's  "  Buch  der  Lieder ; "  that  instantaneously  trans- 
forms the  whole  universe  for  us  in  any  song  of  Schubert's 
or  of  Schumann's;  that  builds  worlds  and  casts  them 
down  in  fiery  despair  in  a  Wagnerian  trilogy.  In  pre- 
sence of  this  waywardness,  not,  indeed,  of  the  Germany 
of  Bismarck  and  of  the  two  Williams,  but  of  the  now 
almost  dead  romantic  Germany,  whose  empire,  as  Jean 


156  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Paul  said,  was  of  the  air,  —  in  presence  of  this  wayward- 
ness, the  world  is  once  for  all  plastic,  changeable  ;  a  world 
of  divine  or  of  diabolical  ideas,  but  of  ideas  that  are  not 
so  much  eternal  as  capricious.  Fichte  makes  this  ideal 
world  a  moral  one.  Others,  as  we  shall  see,  will  find 
this  universe  of  the  selves  a  universe  of  romance,  of  senti- 
mentality, of  anything  but  hard  fact.  Yet  think  not  that 
this  capricious  world  utterly  lacks  truth.  The  real  world, 
too,  once  for  all  flows ;  flows  and  changes  throughout  its 
whole  existence,  as  Heraclitus  long  ago  said ;  and  pre- 
serves, too,  its  sacred  and  permanent  logos  just  by  chan- 
ging. Well,  it  is  the  office  of  the  wayward  to  note  the 
various  aspects  of  just  this  change,  this  plasticity,  this 
seemingly  hopeless  variety,  under  which  the  eternal  truth 
presents  itself  to  us.  In  the  world  of  the  wayward,  no- 
thing seems  fast.  View  follows  view,  romantic  theory 
chases  romantic  theory,  until  we  begin  to  fear  that  no- 
thing is  true,  and  that  here,  even  as  in  Hume's  skeptical 
world  also,  if  we  find  the  Holy  Grail  itself,  "  it,  too,  will 
fade,  and  crumble  into  dust."  But,  if  we  watch  patiently, 
we  shall  see  that,  from  this  very  wealth  of  forms,  the  true 
form  which  is  present  through  all  the  changes  will  in 
some  fashion  ultimately  come  to  light.  Fichte's  moral 
universe,  where  matter  is  only  our  duty  made  manifest 
to  our  senses,  and  the  universe  of  the  romantic  school, 
where  all  is  sentiment,  are,  after  all,  fragments  of  the  true 
faith.  That  thought  is  the  thread  which  is  to  guide  us 
through  the  labyrinth.  The  truth  is  the  whole.  Even 
the  fantastic  has  its  part  therein. 

>  v. 

But  let  us  look  a  second  time  and  more  closely  at 
Fichte's  view.  The  only  perfectly  clear  thing,  he  says, 
at  the  outset  of  philosophy,  is  that  there  is  a  self.  Any 
self  will  of  course  do,  but  some  self  one  must  start  with, 
namely,  of  course,  his  own.  Now  a  self  asserts,  "  I  am.* 


FICHTE.  15? 

It  also  equally  asserts,  "  Something  exists  beside  me ; 
there  is  a  not-self."  If  you  don't  believe  that  this  is 
always  asserted,  Fichte  invites  you  to  try  it  and  see.1 
Well,  here  forthwith  is  a  puzzle.  I  assert  that  I  exist ; 
and  then  I  assert  that  something  exists  beside  me.  Now 
I  can  of  course  know  myself,  it  would  seem,  but  how  can 
I  get  outside  myself  to  see  what  is  not  myself?  How 
come  I  to  guess  at  the  existence  of  something  other  than 
I  am  ?  Fichte's  solution  is  simple.  I  don't  guess  at  it ; 
nor  is  it  a  fact  forced  upon  me  from  without,  in  any  fash- 
ion. My  true  self  freely  chooses  to  recognize  the  exist- 
ence of  something  beside  myself  as  a  fact.  To  be  sure,  I, 
in  my  private,  empirical,  momentary  capacity,  seem  not 
to  choose,  but  helplessly  to  find  this  outer  existence. 
Really,  however,  it  is  my  own,  my  deeper  self,  whose 
choice  is  at  each  moment  shown  to  me.  But,  then,  ob- 
serve, unless  I  thus  chose  to  recognize  something  beyond 
myself,  I  should  have  nothing  to  do,  I  should  have  no- 
thing to  resist,  to  fight,  to  win,  to  love,  —  in  short,  to  act 
upon,  in  any  way.  The  deepest  truth,  then,  is  a  prac- 
tical truth.  I  need  something  not  myself,  in  order  to  be 
active,  that  is,  in  order  to  exist.  My  very  existence  is 
practical ;  it  is  self-assertion.  I  exist,  so  to  speak,  by 
hurling  the  fact  of  my  existence  at  another  than  myself. 
I  limit  myself  thus,  by  a  foreign  somewhat,  opaque,  ex- 
ternal, my  own  opposite ;  but  my  limitation  is  the  free 
choice  of  my  true  self.  By  thus  limiting  myself  I  give 
myself  something  to  do,  and  thus  win  my  own  very  exist- 
ence. Yet  this  opposition,  upon  which  my  life  is  based, 
is  an  opposition  within  my  deepest  nature.  I  have  a 
foreign  world  as  the  theatre  of  my  activity  ;  I  exist  only 
to  conquer  and  win  that  apparently  foreign  world  to  my- 

1  Cf.  the  noteworthy  passage  in  the  Grundlage  of  1794,  Fichte's 
Werke,  vol.  i.  p.  253  :  "  Dass  es  ein  solches  Setzen  gebe  [namely,  of 
the  Nicht-lch~\  kann  jeder  nur  (lurch  seine  eigene  Erfahruug  sich  dap- 
thun." 


158  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

self ;  I  must  come  to  possess  it ;  I  must  prove  that  it  is 
mine.  In  the  process  of  thus  asserting  a  foreign  world, 
and  then  actively  identifying  it  as  not  foreign  and  exter- 
nal, but  as  our  own,  our  life  itself  consists.  This  is  what 
is  meant  by  work,  by  love,  by  duty. 

But  this  process,  thinks  Fichte,  is  essentially  an  endless 
one.  The  more  of  a  self  I  am,  the  more  of  a  world  out- 
side me  I  need,  to  develop  and  to  express  my  energies. 
A  busy  man  needs,  and  therefore  posits,  a  world  full  of 
the  objects  of  his  business.  Without  this  asserted  world 
of  objects,  he,  as  busy  man,  would  cease  to  exist ;  he 
would,  so  to  speak,  retire  from  business  ;  he  and  his  busy 
world  would  stagnate  together.  This,  then,  is  Fichte's 
central  thought :  Your  outer  world,  your  not-self,  is  just 
as  large  as  your  own  spiritual  activity  makes  it.  Fichte 
tries  to  show  in  detail  how  the  various  forms  of  our  rec- 
ognition of  outer  reality,  such  as  perception,  imagination, 
space,  time,  causality,  and  the  rest,  arise.  Into  such  de- 
tails I  have  no  time  to  follow  him  ;  but  the  essence  of  his 
doctrine  consists  in  identifying  Kant's  theoretical  and 
practical  reason,  and  in  saying  that  all  our  assertion  of 
a  world  beyond,  of  a  world  of  things  and  of  people, 
merely  expresses,  in  practical  form,  our  assertion  of  our 
own  wealthy  and  varied  determination  to  be  busy  with 
things  and  with  people.  Thus,  then,  each  of  us  builds 
his  own  world.  He  builds  it  in  part  unconsciously  ;  and 
therefore  he  seems  to  his  ordinary  thought  not  to  have 
built  it  at  all,  but  merely  to  find  it.  Each  of  us  sees,  at 
any  moment,  not  only  the  world  that  we  are  now  making 
Jby  this  act,  but  the  world  that  we  have  made  by  all  our 
past  acts.  And  hence  our  whole  life  is  thus  consolidated 
before  our  eyes ;  our  world  is  the  world  of  our  conscious 
and  unconscious  deeds.  Thus  we  often  regard  it  as  our 
fate,  and  talk  of  an  external  substance,  as  Spinoza  did. 
In  this  we  are  wrong.  No  activity,  no  world  ;  no  self,  no 
not-self;  no  self-assertion,  no  facts  to  assert  ourselves 
upon.  So,  at  least,  Fichte  teaches. 


FICHTE.  159 

But,  you  will  say,  is  not  the  outcome  of  all  this  a  sort 
of  solitary  self-existence,  where  each  one  of  us  is  shut  up 
to  his  own  life  ?  Has  the  spiritual  world  no  absolute 
reality  ?  Is  it,  too,  the  mere  dream  of  our  activity  ?  Nu, 
thinks  Fichte,  not  so ;  and  here  conies  a  part  of  his  doc- 
trine that  was  to  himself  the  hardest  part.  He  never 
made  it  perfectly  clear,  although  he  tried  again  and  again. 
To  you  I  can  only  suggest  it.  When  we  reflect  upon  our 
inner  activity  we  find  it,  after  all,  not  an  individual  self- 
will,  but  a  deep  longing  for  universal  life.  The  true  self, 
therefore  (and  so  far  the  thing  is  indeed  clear  enough), 
the  true  self  is  n't  the  private  person,  the  individual  called 
Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte,  the  impecunious  tutor,  the  waver- 
ing lover  of  Johanna  Rahn,  the  professor  in  Jena,  falsely 
accused  of  atheism.  This  true  self,  thinks  Fichte,  is  some- 
thing infinite.  It  needs  a  whole  endless  world  of  life  to 
express  itself  in.  Its  moral  law  could  n't  be  expressed  in 
full  on  any  one  planet.  Johann  Gottlieb  may  be  one  of 
its  prophets ;  but  the  heavens  could  not  contain  its  glory 
and  its  eternal  business.  No  one  of  us  ever  finally  gets 
at  the  true  Reason  which  is  the  whole  of  him.  Each  one 
of  us  is  a  partial  embodiment,  an  instrument  of  the  moral 
law,  and  our  very  consciousness  tells  us  that  this  law  is 
the  expression  of  an  infinite  world  life.  The  true  self 
is  the  will,  which  is  everywhere  present  in  things.  This 
will  is,  indeed,  the  vine,  whereof  our  wills  are  the  branches. 
Fichte  has  innumerable  ways  of  trying  to  tell  finally  and 
clearly  the  story  of  what  the  infinite  will  is  and  does.  It 
is  eternally  asserting  itself  afresh,  through  countless  finite 
wills.  Each  one  of  these  finite  wills,  as  moral  agent, 
builds  its  sense  world,  and  finds,  in  this  sense  world,  th* 
manifestations  of  other  agents.  For  all  the  agents,  a< 
ministers  of  the  divine,  work  together.  The  moral  cor 
sciousness  says  to  each,  "  If  I  am  real,  so  also  are  these. 
Work  with  them ;  respect  their  rights  ;  honor  their  free- 
dom ;  join  with  them  to  build  a  higher  and  freer  world 


160  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

than  any  of  us  now  see."  In  this  organization  of  life, 
even  here  on  earth,  in  this  kindliness,  this  honorable  con- 
duct, this  social  unity,  which  constitutes  our  better  life, 
something  of  the  divine  will  is  thus  realized.  But  the 
problem  of  its  complete  realization  is  an  endless  one. 
Nowhere,  in  all  the  infinity  of  countless  worlds  of  moral 
struggle,  can  the  divine  will  be  fully  realized.  As  I  my- 
self seek  to  assert  myself  all  my  life  long,  but  never  suc- 
ceed fully  in  my  task,  am  always  struggling  with  obsta- 
cles, casting  aside  all  that  I  have  won,  in  order  to  pursue 
new  triumphs,  even  so  the  divine  will  is  restless  through 
all  its  worlds,  and  pulses  from  self  to  self,  from  attainment 
to  attainment,  in  an  everlasting  search  for  a  complete 
self-realization.  The  true  God  is,  therefore,  as  Fichte 
holds,  existent  in  our  universe  as  the  pulse  of  its  moral 
order,  as  the  life  of  lives,  the  eternal  spiritual  self-creator, 
whose  work  is  never  done,  who  rests  never,  and  who  is  no 
one  individual  being  anywhere,  but  who  is  the  live  and 
organic  unity  of  all  beings.  Even  herein,  however,  thinks 
Fichte,  he  finds  his  highest  peace,  that  in  endless  toil  he 
shall  reassert  himself,  and  shall  win  the  world  which  is 
his  embodiment. 


J 
^ 


The  completest  popular  statement  possible  of  Fichte's 
system  is  given  in  his  own  words  in  his  book  on  the  "  Vo- 
cation of  Man."  This  work  was  first  published  in  1800, 
shortly  after  Fichte  left  Jena,  and  was  no  doubt  meant  to 
justify  him,  in  the  eyes  of  the  general  public,  against  the 
charge  of  atheism.  The  argument  of  the  work  falls  into 
three  parts,  denominated  respectively,  "  Doubt,"  "  Know- 
ledge," and  "Faith."  Under  the  first  head  Fichte  de- 
scribes the  views  and  problems  of  his  own  pre-Kantian 
period.  Under  the  second  head  he  sets  forth  the  revolu- 
tion produced  in  his  thought  by  the  influence  of  Kant. 
In  the  third  part  he  explains  the  conceptions  of  the  moral 
order  and  of  the  infinite  will.  The  style  is  eloquent,  tire« 


FICHTE.  161 

less,  too  full  of  explanation  and  of  illustrations  ;  the  work 
as  a  whole  is  profound  and  inspiring.  Let  us  hear  yet  a 
word  of  Fichte's  own  from  this  book,  in  a  fine  passage 
where  he  appeals  direct  to  this  infinite  itself.  "  Supreme 
and  living  will,"  he  says,  "  whom  no  name  names,  to  thee 
may  I  lift  up  my  soul,  for  thou  and  I  are  not  parted. 
Thy  voice  sounds  in  me,  and  mine  again  in  thee ;  and  all 
my  thoughts,  if  only  they  be  true,  are  thought  in  thee. 
I  comprehend  thee  not,  yet  in  thee  I  comprehend  myself 
and  the  world.  .  .  .  Best  fitted  to  know  thee  is  childlike 
and  submissive  simplicity.  ...  I  know  not  what  thou  art 
for  thyself,  .  .  .  and  after  thousand  lives  lived  through, 
my  spirit  will  comprehend  thee  as  little  as  now,  in  this 
house  of  clay.  For  what  I  have  once  won  to  my  compre- 
hension becomes  even  thereby  finite.  .  .  .  Nay,  I  wish 
not  to  know  of  thee  what  thou  art  in  thyself.  I  know 
thy  bearings  on  my  life.  .  .  .  Thou  producest  in  me 
the  knowledge  of  my  duty.  .  .  .  Thou  knowest  what  I 
think  and  will ;  .  .  .  thou  choosest  that  my  free  obedience 
shall  be  effective  to  all  eternity ;  .  .  .  thou  doest,  for  thy 
will  is  itself  Deed.  Thou  livest  and  art,  for  thou  dost 
know,  will,  and  do,  and  art  ever  present  to  my  insight ; 
but  what  thou  art  I  shall  never  wholly  know  through  all 
the  eternities." 

This,  you  see,  is  Fichte's  theism.  The  essence  of  it  is, 
with  all  the  analogies  between  the  two,  something  very 
different  from  Kant's  postulating  of  a  God  beyond  the 
world  of  sense.  The  fact  is  that,  for  Fichte,  my  own 
vocation  is  the  central  fact  of  consciousness.  But  what 
my  vocation  is,  is  a  matter  for  deeper  consideration. 
And,  if  T  duly  consider  my  vocation,  I  find  that  there  is 
a  measureless  strength  of  restless  will  about  me,  which 
demands  an  infinity  of  time  in  which  to  work  out  my 
vocation,  and  an  infinite  business  to  meet,  with  its  magni- 
tude, the  endlessly  significant  office  that  I  choose  for  my- 
self. Plainly,  then,  I,  the  true  self,  am  not  the  mere  self 


162  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

of  the  world  of  sense,  the  self  who  eats  and  talks,  and  has 
this  name.  It  might  be  truer  to  say  that  I,  the  real,  the 
deeper,  the  relatively  impersonal,  or,  rather,  if  you  like, 
the  genuinely  and  essentially  personal  self,  need,  and  so 
express  myself  in,  the  world  of  social  business.  All  we 
human  selves  are  thus  one  true  organic  self,  in  so  far  as 
we  work  together.  And  this  organic  self  we  all  of  us  ex- 
perience just  in  so  far  as  we  do  toil  together.  But  not 
even  this  larger  self  of  society  can  fully  express  the  voca- 
tion which  constitutes  me  in  my  true,  in  my  deeper  per- 
sonality. No,  my  true  vocation  is  endless,  is  eternal.— By 
it  I  am  linked,  not  through  a  mere  postulate,  but  through 
all  my  deeper  self-consciousness,  to  the  very  essence  of  the 
divine  personality.—  When  I  reflect  upon  this  truth,  lo ! 
my  earthly  existence,  in  its  darkness  and  limitations,  van- 
ishes from  before  my  eyes.  With  you  I  stand  in  presence 
of  the  divinest  of  mysteries,  the  communion  of  all  the 
spirits  in  the  one  self  whose  free  act  is  the  very  heart's 
blood  of  our  spiritual  being.  Nay,  must  it  not,  then, 
thinks  Fichte,  must  not  this  be  true  of  us  ?  We  are  dead, 
and  our  life  is  hid  in  God.  He  is  the  only  self.  His 
will  is  the  only  will ;  his  self-assertion  lives  in  our  every 
deed  and  love ;  his  restlessness  trembles  in  every  throb  of 
our  hearts  ;  his  joy  thrills  in  every  triumph  of  our  cour- 
age. 

Well,  in  this  thought,  thus  eloquently  suggested  by  the 
restless  and  unsatisfying  Fichte,  you  have  the  beginnings 
of  the  post-Kantian  German  idealism.  The  question, 
u  Who  is  the  true  self  ?  "  thus  becomes  central  in  thought. 
Kant  had  really  made  it  so,  when  he  made  all  reasonable 
experience  a  continual  appeal  of  my  momentary  to  my 
larger  self.  Fichte  merely  universalizes  the  problem. 
The  world  is  the  poem  thus  dreamed  out  by  the  inner  life. 
Who,  then,  is  the  dreamer  ?  That  is  the  question  of  the 
romantic  period  of  German  speculation.  If  you  remem- 
ber this  as  the  central  problem  in  all  that  is  to  follow  in 


FICHTE.  163 

the  two  succeeding  lectures,  you  will  have  in  hand  the 
thread  that  will  guide  us  through  this  labyrinth  of  Ger- 
man speculation.  Do  not  tremble,  I  beg  you,  before  the 
mysterious  seeming  of  the  region  into  which  we  enter. 
The  thread,  firmly  held,  will  soon  lead  us  back  again  to 
the  study  of  the  natural  order,  back  again  to  the  king- 
dom of  modern  science,  to  the  region  where  the  facts  are 
indeed  stubborn,  but  where  the  deepest  problems,  as  the 
idealists  will  meanwhile  have  taught  us,  must  needs  be 
spiritual.  To  teach,  indeed,  just  this  lesson,  the  spiritu- 
ality of  the  stubborn  world  of  outer  fact,  was  the  true 
mission  of  these  idealists,  who  so  often  despised  facts. 


LECTURE  VI. 

THE  ROMANTIC  SCHOOL  IN  PHILOSOPHY. 

FICHTE,  as  we  have  seen,  had  begun  by  setting  aside 
Kant's  things  in  themselves.  What,  after  all,  thinks  he, 
is  the  use  of  even  mentioning  such  mysteries  as  the  dead 
things  in  themselves,  whereof  you  only  declare  that  they 
are  unknowable  ?  What  if  they  are  said  to  exist  ?  Un- 
less we  can  know  them,  they  are  to  us  as  good  as  nought. 
But  now,  for  others  besides  Fichte,  Kant's  things  in  them- 
selves used  at  that  time  to  be  objects  of  no  little  sport,  — 
sport  which  took,  of  course,  a  rather  heavy  and  German 
form,  but  which  was  very  well  warranted  by  the  situation. 
The  things  in  themselves  of  Kant's  theoretical  philosophy, 
the  sources  of  all  our  experience,  but  themselves  never 
experienced,  were  too  dim  and  distant  to  seem  to  a 
further  reflection  anything  but  chimeras.  An  epigram, 
usually  attributed  to  Schiller,  compared  them  to  useless 
household  furniture,  once  the  pride  of  that  very  form  of 
metaphysic  which  Kant's  "  Critique  "  had  undertaken  to 
slay.  For  this  old  metaphysic  had  pretended  to  know 
them.  Now  that  the  pretentious  doctrine  is  dead,  what 
is  the  use  of  the  abandoned  furniture  ? 

"  Da  die  Metaphysik  vor  Kurzem  unbeerbt  abging 
Werden  die  Dinge  an  sich  morgen  sub  hasta  verkauf t."  * 

But  the  house  of  our  philosophy  thus  once  emptied  of 
cumbersome  furniture,  Fichte  had  found  himself  able  to 

1  That  is,  freely  translated  :  — 

"  Notice  :  The  late  metaphysic  is  dead  without  heirs,  and  to-morrow 
AH  the  things  in  themselves  shall  under  the  hammer  be  sold." 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL   IN   PHILOSOPHY.  165 

fill  it  in  his  own  fashion  with  the  rarest  treasures  of  truth. 
The  real  thing  in  itself,  according  to  Fichte,  is  the  active 
I,  the  Ego,  the  subject  of  self-consciousness.  This  each 
of  us  knows  in  his  own  person.  To  watch  the  activity  of 
this  great  source  of  our  being,  to  sound  the  depths  of  its 
endless  nature,  is  to  come  to  the  true  knowledge  of  God 
and  of  things  which  Spinoza  already  demanded  for  the 
wise  man,  and  which  Kant  sought  in  vain  in  the  external 
world.  We  and  our  world  exist  together.  Our  world  is 
the  expression  of  our  character.  As  a  man  thinketh,  so 
is  he ;  but  with  equal  truth,  according  to  Fichte,  as  a 
upan  is,  so  thinks  he.  He  sees  himself  in  all  he  sees. 
And  this  self  that  a  man  sees  crystallized  in  all  his 
world  of  sense,  of  society,  and  of  philosophy,  is  simply  his 
own  fashion  of  conduct,  his  busy  world-building  tempera- 
ment. At  the  outset  of  life  each  personal  self  says,  "  I 
must  exist,  1  will  exist."  But  no  one  can  exist  unless  he 
is  ready  to  act.  My  life,  my  existence,  is  in  work.  I 
toil  for  self-consciousness,  and  without  toil  no  conscious- 
ness. But  once  more,  also,  I  can  only  work  if  I  have  a 
task,  something  foreign  to  me,  a  not-self  to  influence  and 
finally  to  conquer.  Therefore  it  is,  thinks  Fichte,  that 
I  stand  from  the  beginning  in  the  presence  of  a  world 
which  seems  external.  My  deeper  self  unconsciously  pro- 
duces this  foreign  world,  and  then  bids  me  win  my  place 
therein.  The  material  things  yonder  are  therefore  just 
the  products  of  my  unconscious  activity.  Their  office  it 
is  to  give  me  something  to  do ;  they  are  the  outer  embodi- 
ment of  my  duty ;  they  are  my  moral  law  made  manifest 
to  sense.  You  and  I  see  the  same  world  about  us  merely 
because  we,  as  moral  beings,  need  and  choose  common 
tasks.  And,  in  a  deeper  sense,  the  reason  why  you  and 
I  see  the  same  world  is  that  we  are  actually  fragmentary 
manifestations  of  one  infinite  self,  whose  ultimate  nature 
we  can  never  fathom,  but  whose  world  is  through  and 
through  a  world  of  common  tasks,  —  a  world  of  a  moral 
order,  whereof  we  are  all  instruments. 


166  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

I. 

In  the  present  lecture  we  have  to  follow  the  further 
story  of  German  idealism  as  exemplified  in  the  views  and 
experiences  of  a  number  of  persons  who,  for  lack  of  a 
better  name,  are  usually  classed  together  as  constituting 
the  German  Romantic  School.  The  peculiar  character  of 
our  undertaking  in  this  course  bids  us  attend  as  much  as 
possible  to  the  relations  between  philosophy  and  life. 
Where,  as  in  the  case  of  the  German  romantic  school,  a 
group  of  writers  tried  to  embody  a  philosophy  in  a  liter- 
ary movement,  and  to  translate  their  own  lives  directly 
into  philosophy,  such  a  phenomenon  cannot  but  be  of 
great  service  to  our  purpose.  And  therefore  I  shall  spend 
time  upon  matter  that  will  indeed  lack  the  technicality 
inseparable  from  even  the  most  general  account  of  Kant's 
philosophy,  but  that  will  still  have  its  bearing  on  our  gen- 
eral task.  In  fact,  my  discussion  will  for  the  time  leave 
the  field  of  technical  philosophy  almost  altogether,  and 
for  the  rest  of  this  lecture  I  shall  speak  of  thoughts  that 
will  have  their  more  metaphysical  bearings  shown  only  in 
later  lectures. 

I  mentioned  in  the  last  lecture  how  Fichte's  philosophy 
is  an  example  of  that  beautiful  waywardness  which  is 
everywhere  characteristic  of  the  Germany  of  the  classical 
and  romantic  periods.  For  the  rest,  to  particularize  con- 
cerning this  waywardness  as  it  shows  itself  in  Fichte,  he 
is,  after  all,  a  very  arbitrary  thinker.  His  system  has 
vast  gaps  in  it.  You  in  vain  seek  to  get  from  Fichte,  for 
instance,  any  precise  deduction  of  how  the  world  of  our 
senses,  down  to  its  very  details,  is  an  embodiment  of  the 
moral  law.  We,  in  this  age,  whose  world  is  so  full  of 
material  facts,  whose  science  has  delved  so  deeply  into 
physical  nature,  whose  industrial  art  is  so  multiform  in 
its  inventions,  whose  whole  view  of  man  makes  him  so 
dependent  for  his  health,  his  fortune,  and  his  very  reason, 


THE   ROMANTIC  SCHOOL  IN   PHILOSOPHY.  167 

upon  physiological  conditions,  feel  at  once  the  great  gulf 
that  divides  Fichte's  ethical  idealism  from  the  world  of 
the  natural  order.  We  honor  the  stern  enthusiasm  of 
this  idealist,  but  we  find  in  his  system  the  record  of  a  dis- 
tinctly individual  experience.  That  he  has  a  hold  upon 
a  very  genuine  truth  we  ought  to  recognize ;  but  we  can- 
not read  his  fearless  and  often  intolerant  essays  without 
becoming  aware  that  it  has  not  pleased  God  to  create  any 
perfectly  orthodox  Fichtean,  save  Fichte  himself.  Many 
of  us  will  no  doubt  call  ourselves,  with  Fichte,  ethical 
idealists,  since  we  indeed  hold  that  the  world  is  through 
and  through  a  moral  order ;  but  his  way  of  showing  how 
it  is  a  moral  order  will  not  content  us.  I,  the  active 
being,  shall  create  this  sense-world  of  mine  unconsciously, 
for  the  sake  of  having  my  task,  the  material  of  my  duty, 
made  manifest  to  my  senses.  Very  good,  but  why,  then, 
do  I  create  a  world  that  has  a  belt  of  asteroids  in  it  be- 
tween the  orbits  of  Macs  and  Jupiter  ?  What  portion  of 
my  personal  and  private  duty  do  the  comets,  or  the  jelly- 
fishes,  or  the  volcanoes,  or  the  mosquitoes,  make  manifest 
to  my  senses  ?  What  part  has  the  Silurian  period  in  the 
scheme  of  my  moral  order  ?  And  of  what  ethical  value 
to  me  are  the  properties  of  the  roots  of  algebraic  equa- 
tions, or  the  asymptotes  of  an  hyperbola?  In  the  world 
of  this  moral  order,  you  see,  there  is  a  great  deal  that  will 
not  easily  submit  to  my  ethical  interpretation.  But  if  we 
say,  with  Fichte,  that  the  real  world  is  after  all  not  the 
world  of  just  my  private  and  individual  moral  order,  but 
the  world  of  God's  infinite  ethical  activity,  so  much  the 
more  is  it  incumbent  upon  us  to  be  industrious  in  our 
efforts  to  comprehend  the  spirituality  of  the  truths  of  na- 
ture by  means  of  formulae  that  are  more  submissive  to 
facts,  more  widely  sensitive  to  the  varied  aspects  of  real- 
ity, less  impatient  of  mystery,  than  were  Fichte's  impetu- 
ous undertakings.  If  God's  world  is  through  and  through 
moral,  it  is  also  through  and  through  complicated,  pro- 
found and  physical. 


168  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

Well,  the  story  of  the  romantic  school  is  the  story  of 
the  enlargement  of  Fichte's  onesidedness  through  the  ap- 
pearance, in  the  first  place,  of  other  not  less  arbitrary 
doctrines,  which  sought  to  interpret  the  whole  world  in 
terms  of  our  spiritual  interests,  but  which  expressed  other 
interests  than  those  that  he  made  central.  And,  for  the 
rest,  this  story  is  also  the  tale  of  the  gradual  fixing  of  all 
such  waywardness  into  the  directions  that  have  proved  so 
fruitful  in  the  recent  decades  of  modern  research.  We 
are  too  frequently  disposed  to  fancy  that  the  philosophy 
of  the  period  of  Fichte,  Schelling,  and  Hegel  is  something 
very  remote  from  the  philosophy  of  our  own  day.  That 
philosophy,  we  say,  was  above  all  just  wayward,  fantastic, 
regardless  of  the  limits  of  human  knowledge,  indifferent 
to  science,  unwisely  imaginative.  Nowadays  we  have 
changed  all  that,  have  abandoned  romantic  wanderings, 
have  come  to  respect  the  facts  of  science,  and  to  let  the 
mysteries  alone.  But  such  a  view  of  our  relations  to  the 
age  of  the  romantic  school  is  not  precisely  historical ;  and 
wherein  it  is  not  precisely  historical  I  want  to  make  plain 
to  you.  Deeper  than  the  contrast  between  that  age  and 
ours  is.  as  we  shall  soon  see,  the  relationship  between  the 
two.  Our  age,  as  we  shall  learn,  contains  merely  what 
was  implicit  in  the  very  waywardness  of  that  revolution- 
ary period.  Their  youthful  enthusiasms,  at  first  vague, 
wandering,  conflicting,  took  form  at  length  through 
growth,  and.  produced,  in  their  maturity,  our  modern_do,c- 
trine  of  evolution,  our  modern  efforts  to  bring  into  close 
relation  the  natural  and  the  spiritual,  our  whole  modern 
many-sidedness  of  interest  and  experience.  The  romantic 
period  was  the  time  of  bloom  and  of  flowers.  Our  period, 
if  you  will,  is,  in  its  matter-of-fact  and  apparently  prosaic 
realism,  the  time  of  the  ripened  seeds,  a  time  which  the 
warm-hearted  usually  scorn  as  a  bleak  and  autumnal  pe- 
riod of  dry  seed-pods  and  chilly  night  airs.  But  the  wise 
love  such  ages  of  ripening  and  of  harvest ;  for  they  know 


THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  IN   PHILOSOPHY.  169 

that  a  richer  growth  is  erelong  to  spring  from  all  these 
barren -seeming  seed -kernels  of  truth.  But  such  meta- 
phors apart,  what  I  want  to  insist  upon  is  the  essential 
unity  of  recent  philosophy  amidst  all  its  transformations. 
Properly  viewed,  the  lesson  of  the  most  fantastic  specula- 
tions of  the  later  German  metaphysic  is  precisely  the  les- 
son which  the  thought  of  to-day  is  trying  to  express  and 
to  utilize.  To  understand  the  meaning  of  contemporary- 
thought,  say  concerning  evolution,  apart  from  a  compre- 
hension of  the  period  from  Kant  to  Hegel,  is  therefore, 
indeed,  like  trying  to  appreciate  the  mature  and  prosaic, 
but  successful  man,  without  some  reference  to  the  splendid 
dreams  of  his  youth.  We  have  never  wholly  broken  with 
the  romantic  period.  We  have  only  grown  older,  and  pos- 
sibly a  little  more  saddened ;  but  those  earlier  ideals  live 
still  in  our  breasts,  only  I  should  be  glad  if  we  were  bet- 
ter aware  of  the  fact  than  sometimes  we  are. 

Our  immediate  task  in  the  coming  lectures  is  thus  two- 
fold. We  want  first  to  show  how  the  romantic  school,  far 
outdoing  the  waywardness  of  Fichte,  supplemented  his 
one-sided  interpretation  of  things  by  other,  equally  ideal- 
istic and  much  more  fantastic,  interpretations  of  reality. 
And*  secondly,  we  want  to  show  how  our  own  more  realis- 
tic age  expresses,  after  all,  not  so  much  an  abandonment  of 
the  true  spirit  of  this  idealistic  period,  as  a  fixation  and  a 
maturing  of  some  of  its  deepest  interests. 

And  now,  as  to  the  romantic  school  itself,  what,  first  of 

all,  is  the  meaning  of  the  word  ? 

^ 

n. 

German  literature,  in  its  great  modern  outgrowth,  be- 
gan, as  you  know,  with  Lfe§§l»g!s  early  works,  just  after 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  ended  with 
the  death  of  its  last  prominent  representative,  Heine,  in 
1856.  But  the  principal  productions  of  this  century  of 
literary  activity  belong  to  a  very  much  briefer  period. 


170  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Leasing  was  a  sort  of  forerunner  of  the  classical  age. 
Long  as  was  Goethe's  literary  life,  his  best  years  are  those 
between  1770  and  Schiller's  death  in  1805.  And  to  the 
credit  of  these  thirty -five  years  may  be  reckoned  much 
the  larger  half  of  the  literary  and  a  decidedly  large  frac- 
tion of  the  philosophical  work  of  the  whole  great  century 
of  German  mental  life.  Not  only  was  this  most  produc- 
tive period  decidedly  brief,  but  the  geographical  limita- 
tions of  the  intenser  literary  interest,  at  any  rate,  in  view 
of  the  fact  that  Germany  had  no  natural  literary  capi- 
tal, are  decidedly  noteworthy.  Two  circles,  the  cgurt_at 
Weimar  and  the  university  a  few  miles  distant  at  Jena, 
were,  between  1775  and  1805,  far  and  away  the  chief  in- 
fluences in  German  literature  and  philosophy.  At  Wei- 
mar, Goethe  and  Schiller  were  for  a  time  together.  In 
Jena,  Schiller  himself  taught  for  some  years,  while  Fichte, 
Schelling,  and  Hegel  all  began  their  academic  activity 
there.  After  1800,  indeed,  Berlin  became  a  centre  sec- 
ond in  importance  only  to  Weimar,  while  the  university 
at  Jena  sadly  declined.  But  not  until  still  later  was  in- 
tellectual activity  of  high  rank  observable  all  over  Ger- 
many from  Berlin  to  Heidelberg,  and  from  Munich  to  the 
Rhine.  However,  as  the  streams  spread  they  lost  their 
swiftness,  and  erelong,  for  the  intense  life  of  the  great 
years,  there  was  substituted  more  and  more  of  that  fruit- 
ful but  quiet  industry  of  minute  German  scholarship,  ft* 
which  we  all  owe  so  much. 

The  years  from  1770  to  1805,  and  the  circles  of  Wei- 
/  mar,  of  Jena,  and,  in  a  less  degree,  of  Berlin,  are  there- 
fore central  in  importance  in  the  history  of  German 
thought.  But  now,  as  must  be  pointed  out,  even  here 
there  are  to  be  specially  mentioned,  as  of  most  critical  sig- 
nificance, ten  years  out  of  these  thirty-five.  They  were 
the  flower  of  the  flower  for  German  life.  These  were  the 
last  ten  years  of  Schiller's  career,  when  his  friendship 
with  Goethe  was  most  intimate,  and  when  also,  in  additioq 


THE  ROMANTIC  SCHOOL  IN  PHILOSOPHY.  171 

to  the  great  classical  poets,  a  new  generation  of  ambitious 
young  men  began  to  appear  upon  the  scene.  You  must 
remember  that,  in  1800,  Goethe  was  fifty-one  and  Schiller 
forty -one  years  old ;  and  at  such  an  age  men  who  have 
become  early  famous  are  certain  to  find  themselves 
rounded  by  circles  of  eager  and  often  envious  youth, 
whose  hearts  have  been  set  on  fire  by  the  example  of  the 
elder  geniuses,  and  who  themselves  are  minded  to  do  even 
better  than  their  betters.  So  it  was  with  Goethe  and 
Schiller.  The  young  generation  already  swarmed  all 
about  them  in  Jena  and  in  Weimar.  It  was  a  matter  of 
course,  in  that  day  and  region,  that  if  you  were  young, 
and  were  anybody  at  all,  you  were  a  genius.  The  only 
question  was  what  sort  of  a  genius,  in  your  lordly  spiri- 
tual freedom,  you  had  chosen  to  be.  Four  sorts  of 
geniuses  were  especially  popular,  and  all  four  sorts  were 
as  plenty  as  blackberries.  There  was  the  romancer  of 
genius,  who  was  plotting  to  outdo  Wilhelm  Meister. 
There  was  the  dramatist  of  genius,  who  was  disposed  to 
banish  Schiller's  plays  into  oblivion,  so  soon  as  he  himself 
had  learned  his  trade.  There  was  the  critic  of  genius, 
who  had  grasped  the  meaning  and  lesson  of  the  literature 
of  the  ages,  and  who  was  especially  fond  of  contrasting 
the  Greek  tragedy  with  Shakespeare,  and  of  laying  down 
poetical  laws  for  all  future  time.  And  finally  there  was 
the  philosopher  of  genius,  whose  business  it  was  first  of  all 
to  transcend  Kant,  and  secondly  to  transcend  everybody 
else.  Best  indeed  was  your  lot  in  case  you  chose  to 
exemplify  in  your  person  all  four  sorts  of  genius  at  once, 
as,  for  instance,  the  young  Friej3Bj£h  Schlegel  for  a  while 
delighted  to  do.  Your  inner  experiences  were  then  sim- 
ply inimitable.  In  brief,  "  Bliss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to 
be  alive,  but  to  be  young  was  very  heaven." 

We  may  smile  a  little  at  all  this  ferment  of  ambitious 
hopes,  but  we  can  never  be  too  grateful  for  what  that 
brief  period  accomplished  for  us.  It  gave  us  philosophi- 


172  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

cal  ideas  that,  fragmentary  though  they  were,  will  never 
be  forgotten,  and  it  produced  some  enduring  poetry  and 
romance,  in  addition  to  what  Goethe  and  Schiller  wrote, 
and  of  no  small  merit  at  that.  Now  from  these  circles  of 
the  younger  geniuses,  one  especially  stands  out  in  inter- 
esting prominence.  It  is  the  circle  which  delighted  to 
call  itself  the  Romantic  School.  From  its  often  crude 
efforts  sprang  a  movement,  the  romantic  movement  in  a 
wider  sense,  which  lasted  far  on  into  our  own  century. 
It  is  this  romantic  movement  in  the  wider  sense  that  has 
proved  the  most  characteristic  outcome  of  modern  German 
life  as  it  was  before  1848.  To  the  romantic  movement 
must  be  credited  the  whole  wealth  of  German  tales  and 
songs  that  we  love  best  after  the  greatest  works  of  Goethe 
and  of  Schiller.  The  same  general  movement  had  its 
part  in  nourishing  and  in  inspiring  the  music  x>f  modern 
Germany  from  Beethoven  to  Wagner.  In  brief,  without 
this  movement,  German  thought  and  German  emotion 
would  have  no  such  meaning  as  they  have  for  us  to-day. 

But  in  the  narrower  sense,  the  name  Romantic_JSchopl 
was  originally  applied  only  to  the  little  company  of  young 
men,  all  born  somewhere  between  1765  and  1775,  of 
whom  the  most  prominent  were  the  two  Schlegels,  Augus- 
tus and  his  brother  Friedrich,  Ludwig  Tieck,  romancer 
and  dramatist,  Novalis  (whose  real  name  was  Friedrich 
v.  Hardenberg),  the  philosopher  Schelling,  and  the  theo- 
logian Schleiermacher.  The  Schlegels  were  the  criticsjoj 
the  school,  and  were  also  men  of  considerable  metaphysi- 
cal interest.  Novalis,  who  died  very  young,  touches,  in 
his  fragmentary  remains,  upon  all  the  characteristic  inter- 
ests of  the  romanticists ;  he  is  philosophical,  poetical,  crit- 
ical; but  he  is  everywhere  and  always  the  born  dreamer. 
Schelling  was  intimately  associated  in  a  personal  sense 
with  all  his  fellow  romanticists.  If  his  intense  meta- 
physical tastes  kept  him  from  attempting  very  seriously 
either  dramas  or  romances,  his  early  speculations  bear 


THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL   IN   PHILOSOPHY.  173 

everywhere  the  mark  of  his  friendships;  they  are  the 
work  of  a  restless  and  artistic  soul,  who  loved  the  universe 
with  a  sort  of  tender  passion,  and  whose  philosophy  is, 
even  in  its  most  technical  subtleties,  as  much  the  confes- 
sion of  a  fiery  heart  as  it  is  the  outcome  of  a  brilliant 
imagination  and  a  wonderfully  skillful  wit.  I  have  pre- 
ferred rather  to  discuss  the  philosophy  of  the  romantic 
school  under  this  name  than  to  confine  my  title  or  my 
survey  to  Schelling,  the  representative  philosopher  of  the 
little  group,  because  it  is  hero  the  movement  that  ex- 
presses itself  in  the  man,  not  the  man  who  masters  the 
movement.  Schelling  was  himself,  always,  even  as  phi- 
losopher, a  creature  of  the  moment.  His  moments  were 
indeed  often  very  great  ones  and  might  need  each  a  whole 
volume  to  express  itself.  But  Schelling  is  not,  like  Kant, 
a  systematic  and  long  -  plotting  thinker;  nor  yet,  like 
Fichte,  a  man  who,  after  many  adventures,  is  completely 
overwhelmed  and  thenceforth  possessed  by  a  single  idea. 
No,  Schelling  possesses  directly  the  wavering  passion  of 
his  romantic  friends.  His  kaleidoscopic  philosophy, 
which  changed  form  with  each  new  essay  that  he  pub- 
lished, was  like  their  whole  scheme  of  life  and  of  art. 
Trust  your  genius  ;  follow  your  noble  heart ;  change  your 
doctrine  whenever  your  heart  changes,  and  change  your 
heart  often.  Such  is  the  practical  creed  of  the  romanti- 
cists. The  world,  you  see,  is  after  all  the  world  of  the 
inner  life.  Kant  cut  us  off  from  things  in  themselves ; 
Fichte  showed  us  that  it  is  the  I,  the  self,  that  makes  the 
jyorld.  Let  us  accept  this  lesson.  The  world  is  essen- 
tially what  men  of  genius  make  it.  Let  us  be  men  of 
genius^-und  make  what  we  choose.  We  shall  then  be  as 
gods,  knowing  good  and  evil.  «-*-^ 

Herein,  as  you  see,  lies  at  once  the  great  difference  be- 
tween the  romantic  school  and  Fichte.  Fichte  had  said : 
The  world  is  the  world  as  self -consciousness  builds  it; 
but  the  essence  of  self-consciousness  is  the  moral  will,  the 


174  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

will  to  act  dutifully,  steadfastly,  nobly,  divinely ;  and 
therefore  the  world  is  duty  solidified  to  our  senses.  The 
romantic  spirit  says  from  the  very  start:  The  world  is 
indeed  the  world  as  self-consciousness  builds  it ;  but  the 
true  self  is  the  self  that  men  of  genius,  poets,  construc- 
tive artists  know  ;  hence  the  real  world  is  such  as  to  sat- 
isfy the  demands  of  the  man  of  genius,  the  artist.  Enjo- 
tion,  heart-experience,  longings,  divinations  of  the  soul, 
are  the  best  instruments  for  the  philosopher.  Dream  out 
your  world.  It  is  after  all  but  a  dream  of  the  inner  life, 
this  vast  universe  about  us.  The  noblest  dreamer  will  be 
the  man  to  understand  it  the  best. 

The  distinguishing  features  of  this  group  of  young  men 
were  then,  to  sum  up,  so  far,  these:  they  proposed  in 
common  to  create  a  new  literary  movement ;  and  whilst 
they  were  rather  speculative  metaphysicians  than  true 
poets,  they  were  nevertheless  rather  romancers  than 
soberly  constructive  philosophers.  They  therefore  suggest 
rather  than  complete.  Their  lesson  is  of  more  impor- 
tance to  us  than  are  their  systems.  At  the  start,  that  is, 
in  the  years  about  1795,  they  were  under  the  influence  of 
Fichte,  but  his  ethical  idealism  soon  grew  too  stern  for 
them.  They  interpreted  the  world  rather  in  terms  of  sen- 
timent and  of  bold  divination  than  in  terms  of  the  moral 
law.  For  the  rest,  external  nature  interested  them,  even 
in  their  most  idealistic  moods,  more  than  it  had  interested 
Fichte.  Of  course,  the  external  world  is  for  them  too 
only  mind  solidified,  only  a  mass  of  ideas  seen  from  with- 
out. But  they  are  dissatisfied  with  Fichte's  moral  law  as 
a  full  account  of  the  essence  of  this  outer  mirage  of  our 
senses.  Art,  they  hold,  is  as  suggestive  as  morality  for 
the  speculative  thinker.  Nature  is  therefore  a  work  of 
unconscious  art,  a  form  which  the  great  Genius  of  the 
world  gives  to  his  experiences.  God  is  an  artist,  a  poet, 
who  pours  out  the  wealth  of  his  beautiful  life  in  all  the 
world  of  sense.  Of  this  God,  we  too  are  embodiments; 


THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  IN  PHILOSOPHY.  175 

only  we  are  not  blind,  as  his  other  works  are.  We  are 
conscious,  and  therefore  it  is  that  we  see  in  sense-form,  in 
nature,  our  own  ideals  crystallized.  The  more  inner 
experiences  we  ourselves  have,  the  more  feelings,  longings, 
ideas  we  possess,  the  more  means  we  shall  therefore  have 
of  interpreting  nature.  It  is  in  vain,  think  these  men, 
that  you  gather  and  heap  up  natural  facts,  if  you  have  no 
heart.  Only  aj>oet  can__understand  nature,  for  the  true 
laws  of  nature  are  through  and  through  analogous  to  the 
laws  of  the  heart.  If  (so  the  romanticists  would  say),  if 
we  have  ever  been  in  love,  then  and  then  only  we  know 
why  the  plants  grow  towards  the  sunlight,  or  the  free- 
swinging  needles  turn  to  the  pole,  or  why  the  planets  are 
loyal  to  the  sun.  If  we  are  artistically  complete  in  our 
inner  natures,  then  we  comprehend  why  the  crystals  love 
their  regular  forms.  To  understand  the  fljffprpnra  V>A- 
tween  organic  and  inorganic  matter,  you  have  again  to 
study  first  your  own  inner  consciousness,  and  to  examine 
its  various  stages,  as  they  lead  up  from  disorganized  sen- 
sations to  clear  and  organic  reason.  For  the  forms  of 
matter  in  the  outer  world  are  symbolic,  are  precisely  ana- 
logous, stage  for  stage,  to  these  processes  of  the  inner  life. 
In  brief,  to  study  nature  is  to  sympathize  with  nature,  to 
trace  the  likenesses  between  the  inner  life  and  the  mag- 
nets, the  crystals,  the  solar  systems,  the  living  creatures, 
of  the  physical  world.  It  is  the  part  of  genius  to  feel 
such  sympathies  with  things;  it  is  the  part  of  philosophy 
to  record  your  sympathies.  Artists  are  often  unconscious 
philosophers,  but  great  philosophers,  from  this  romantic 
point  of  view,  are  never  more  than  consummate  artists. 
Feeling  is  an  indispensable  guide  to  reason.  We  should 
never  know  God  did  we  not  share  his  nature  in  our  emo- 
tions. He  is  only  the  many-sided  and  infinite  genius. 
We  appreciate  him  because  we  young  romanticists  are 
geniuses  ourselves. 


176  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

m. 

Such  philosophy  as  this  was,  of  course,  capable  of  innu- 
merable  forms.  Let  us  illustrate  more  in  detail  from  the 
work  of  particular  men :  Best  do  they  comprehend  truth, 
declares  in  substance  the  young  Friedrich  Schlegel,  best 
do  they  comprehend  truth  who  have  experienced  the  most 
moods.  The  truly  philosophical  attitude  towards  life  and 
reality  is  therefore  one  of  a  sort  of  courageous  fickle- 
ness. Schlegel  himself  called  it  the  romantic  irony,  and 
endeavored  to  found  a  system  upon  it.  This  is  his  rather 
grotesque  attempt  to  revive  the  Socratic  method  and  doc- 
trine. Socrates  had  founded  his  whole  life  as  a  conversa- 
tional teacher,  who  never  preached  but  always  asked 
questions,  upon  a  sort  of  ironical  confession  that  he  was 
not  wise.  "  This,"  he  used  to  affirm,  "  is  my  only  wis- 
dom, to  know  that  I  am  an  utterly  ignorant  man."  Well, 
somewhat  so,  but  still  with  a  difference,  thinks  Schlegel, 
the  romantic  genius  confesses  that  marvelous  as  is  his 
present  divination  of  the  truth  of  things,  it  is,  after  all,  a 
quick  divination,  so  to  speak,  which  will  away  again  ere- 
long, and  will  give  place  to  some  other  theory,  equally 
creditable  to  its  clever  possessor,  equally  true,  but  also 
equally  fickle  and  therefore  false.  "The  deepest  truth 
known  to  me  is  that  erelong  my  present  truth  will 
change  :  "  such,  thinks  Schlegel,  is  true  wisdom.  For 


the  world,  as  you  see,  is  the  world  for  the  self,  for  the 
inner  life,  for  the  heart.  And  the  heart  is  so  strong  and 
lively  a  thing  that  it  will  change  frequently.  "The 
world  exists  for  me ;  and  to-morrow  I  propose  to  make  a 
new  world : "  such  is  Schlegel's  early  interpretation  of 
the  essence  of  Fichte's  view.  But  alas,  Fichte's  ethical 
idealism,  with  the  moral  law  left  out,  is  too  grotesque  in 
its  mutilation  to  become  a  coherent  doctrine.  Friedrich 
Schlegel  gave  up  this  fickleness  in  later  years,  went  over 
to  the  Catholic  church,  and  devoted  himself  otherwise  to 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  IN   PHILOSOPHY.  177 

Oriental  studies,  wherein  he  well  earned  a  high  and  hon- 
orable rank.  His  stupendous  poetical  genius  somehow 
never  came  to  flower,  much  less  to  fruit,  and  remained 
therefore  a  secret  close  locked  in  his  bosom.  He  assures 
us  that  he  possessed  it,  and  no  doubt  he  knew,  for  in 
those  days,  as  you  are  aware,  the  inner  life  knew  every- 
ihing. 

Novalis,  our  second  illustration,  is  a  more  interesting 
character.  His  was  a  profound  and  noble  nature,  but 
fate  forbade  him  to  reach  maturity.  To  his  beautiful  and 
baffling  fragments  the  sensitive  reader  returns  ever  and 
anon  afresh,  perplexed,  disappointed,  end  yet  always  de- 
lighted. Novalis  never  lived  to  finish  anything.  His 
philosophical  fragments  are  after  all,  however,  the  best 
brief  cornpend  you  could  find  of  the  essence  of  the  roman- 
tic philosophy,  in  all  its  spiritual  depth  and  in  all  its 
waywardness.  For  Friedrich  Schlegel,  in  his  metaphysi- 
cal capacity,  as  you  have  just  seen,  I  cannot  feel  any 
serious  respect.  He  was  wayward  and  he  was  not  deep. 
But  Novalis  every  one  who  knows  him  truly  must  thor- 
oughly love.  His  childlike  straightforwardness,  his  amia- 
ble plasticity,  not  to  say  innocent  fickleness  of  character, 
his  real  strength  of  ideals  withal,  his  sensitiveness  to 
truth,  even  his  very  incapacity  (so  characteristic  of  his 
school)  to  do  more  than  turn  chance  jewels  of  truth  over 
and  over  and  hold  them  up  to  the  light  —  all  these  things 
fascinate  us.  He  is  not  exactly  a  great  thinker,  but  of 
his  kind  he  is  so  charming.  Novalis,  or  Friedrich  von 
Hardenberg,  was  born  in  1772,  the  second  child  of  a  large 
and  very  affectionate  family.  His  childhood  was  sickly, 
and  until  he  was  nine  years  old,  while  he  was  the  object 
of  the  kindest  care,  his  mind  seemed  in  no  wise  extraor- 
dinary. Then  suddenly,  after  an  acute  affection,  his 
health  bettered,  and  he  appeared  to  wake,  "  as  if  from 
sleep,"  as  his  biographer  says.  He  was  now  a  quick- 
witted, studious  and  imaginative  boy,  a  great  inventor 


178  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

and  narrator  of  fantastic  fairy  tales,  tender-hearted,  genial, 
a  lover  of  mystery.  From  1790' to  1793  he  attended  sev- 
eral universities,  was  then  nearly  attracted  into  a  soldier's 
life  by  the  excitement  of  the  revolutionary  period,  but 
was  erelong  led  into  the  hardly  less  exciting  hopes  and 
struggles  of  the  new  literary  and  philosophical  movement, 
through  an  acquaintance  with  Friedrich  Schlegel  and 
with  Fiuhte  himself,  who  was  then  at  the  height  of  his 
earlier  professional  successes.  In  Arnstadt,  in  Thurin- 
gia,  where  Novalis  went  to  learn  a  more  practical  profes- 
sion, in  government  service,  he  met  and  loved  a  very 
young  girl,  Sophie  von  Kiihn.  Her  eyes  suggested  to 
him  the  famous  blaue  Blume,  which  in  his  romance, 
*'  Heinrich  v.  Of terdingen,"  he  afterwards  made  the  sym- 
bol of  the  romantic  ideal  itself,  the  mysterious  wonder  of 
magic  that  his  hero  sees  in  dream  and  thenceforth  seeks. 
Readers  of  Heine's  book  on  the  Romantic  School  will 
remember  this  Blue  Flower.  Sophie  was  not  yet  four- 
teen when  Friedrich  v.  Hardeuberg  was  betrothed  to  her. 
They  were  never  married  ;  and  three  years  later  she  died, 
after  a  long  illness,  constantly  watched  to  the  end  by  her 
devoted  lover,  to  whom  by  this  time  the  worship  of  his 
love  had  become  a  religion.  Her  death  was  the  turning- 
point  of  his  brief  career.  His  mourning  for  her  took  a 
form  worthy  of  a  romantic  philosopher.  He  dated  a  new 
sacred  era  from  the  day  of  her  death,  and  kept  a  diary 
in  accordance  with  his  thus  established  chronology.  The 
diary,  which  is  unfortunately  somewhat  brief,  is  devoted 
to  meditations  intended  to  prepare  him  to  meet  her  in 
the  life  beyond.  And  as  for  this  meeting,  he  decides  to 
bring  it  about  in  a  way  which  shall  express  and  conform 
his  ardent  faith  in  Fichtean  principles.  Fichte,  namely, 
has  said  that  our  will  is  the  master  of  the  universe. 
Well,  to  be  sure,  suicide,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  is  not  the 
philosopher's  way  to  the  other  world  ;  but  may  not  one  by 
sheer  force  of  will  so  purify  himself  as  to  become  spirit 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  IN   PHILOSOPHY.  179 

nally  fit  to  live  in  the  higher  life,  and  thereupon,  not  in« 
deed  by  any  mere  fading  away,  but  by  one  supreme  Ent- 
schluss,  one  resolution,  made  for  and  by  his  deeper  self, 
simply  transfer  himself,  in  a  single  glorious  moment,  to 
the  realm  of  free  spirits?  Friedrich  persuades  himself 
that  this  is  possible,  and  decides  to  give  himself  just  one 
year  to  prepare  his  soul  for  the  final  act  of  faith.  He 
will  not  go  to  her  in  weakness,  nor  through  the  door  of 
illness  or  of  violence.  In  the  full  glow  of  health,  in  the 
ecstasy  of  a  pure  love,  he  will  make  himself  ready,  and 
then  he  will  pass  over  in  one  instant  to  Sophie's  side. 
You  may  be  reminded  here  of  the  lover  in  a  song  which 
Schubert's  music  has  rendered  so  familiar  and  tear-com- 
pelling. I  mean  the  little  romanza  called  "  Rosamunde ;  " 
save,  indeed,  that  das  Ende  vom  Lied,  in  case  of  Novalis, 
is  somewhat  different.  During  this  time  of  mourning  he 
planned  his  wonderful  Hymns  to  the  Night,  very  brief 
and  mystical  rhapsodies  in  Ossianic  prose,  interspersed 
with  verse.  His  diary,  however,  soon  complains  that  it  is 
a  little  hard  to  be  quite  healthy  and  still  to  remain  wholly 
unworldly.  One  has  so  many  temptations  to  forgetful- 
ness  of  lofty  ideals.  One  is,  after  all,  but  twenty-six; 
one  loves  discussion,  friends,  philosophy  ;  one  plainly  has 
even  a  good  appetite  ;  and  alas !  this  world  is  so  fair, 
this  age  in  which  one  lives  is  so  inspiring !  Nay,  one  is 
not  yet  quite  worthy  of  the  world  of  free  spirits,  nor  of 
Sophie.  So  the  days  go  by ;  and  when  the  year  of  the 
preparation  for  the  great  Entsdduss  is  done,  not  Novalis, 
but  Sophie  has  passed  —  this  time  not  merely  into  the 
world  of  spirits,  but  even  into  the  realm  of  the  pure  Pla- 
tonic Ideas  themselves.  Novalis  still  worships  her  glori- 
fied essence,  but  as  for  his  noble  Fichtean  self,  it  continues 
to  surround  itself  with  the  sense-facts  of  the  terrestrial 
order,  and  now  perceives  its  duty  made  manifest  to  its 
eyes  in  the  person  of  one  Julie  Charpentier ;  for  to  her 
Novalis  is  by  this  time  betrothed  after  the  fashion  of  the 
visible  world. 


180  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

I  assure  you  that  I  do  not  repeat  this  very  well-known 
and  even  rather  famous  story  here  either  in  any  spirit  of 
scoffing,  or  for  the  sake  of  a  digression.  I  can  far  better 
suggest  the  inner  sense  and  the  essence  of  this  whole  ro- 
mantic idealism,  in  all  its  beauty  and  its  waywardness, 
by  such  a  tale  as  this  of  the  love  of  Novalis  than  by  a 
much  longer  homily.  Here,  you  see,  is  the  romantic  in- 
terpretation of  Fichte's  doctrine.  You  see  the  spirituality, 
the  tenderness,  the  perfectly  honest  sentiment  of  it  all ; 
and  you  also  see  the  essential  fickleness,  the  inevitable 
arbitrariness,  of  an  idealism  that  has  not  yet  found  any 
truly  objective  standards.  In  a  less  gentle  soul  than  No- 
valis this  arbitrariness  would  become  cynical.  Such  noble 
sentiments  have,  you  see,  their  even  ghastly  dangers.  Is 
it  feeling  that  guides  you  in  your  interpretation  of  the 
world  ?  Are  your  ideas  simply  plastic  ?  Do  you  make 
your  world  solely  through  your  own  mind  ?  Alas !  as 
Hegel  afterwards  said,  feeling  is  the  mere  soil  of  the 
forest  of  life ;  and  from  the  same  soil  the  noblest  tree  or 
the  hatefulest  weed  may  spring.  Suppose  the  resolution 
of  Novalis  had  been  by  chance  not  only  less  fickle,  but 
also  less  noble ;  might  not  his  subjective  idealism  have 
justified  equally  well  a  fierce  rebellion  against  all  that 
humanity  justly  holds  dearest,  instead  of  a  mere  indiffer- 
ence to  what  common  sense  calls  obvious  ?  In  the  later 
history  of  the  romantic  movement  the  fickleness  of  way- 
ward idealism  did  indeed  work  itself  out  to  the  extreme 
of  its  painful  dialectics,  and  if  you  want  to  know  the  re- 
sults, Amadeus  Hoffmann's  tales  of  horror,  or  our  own 
Edgar  Poe's  gloom,  will  tell  you  enough  of  the  story  to 
let  you  see  one  of  its  endings.  The  Nihilism  and  the 
Pessimism  of  more  recent  days  will  give  you  another  out- 
come of  that  arbitrary  idealism  which  knows  no  law. 
And  the  lightning  of  Heine's  scorn  will  show  you  yet 
further  glimpses  of  the  same  lurid  world  in  a  fashion  that 
will  leave  you  undecided  whether  to  laugh  or  to  weept 


THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  IN  PHILOSOPHY.  181 

yet,  all  this  must  not  discourage  true  idealism,  and 
does  not  discourage  it.  What  I  mean  is  just  what  I  have 
already  repeatedly  pointed  out :  That  as  arbitrariness  in 
our  interpretation  of  things  is  the  curse  of  immature  ideal- 
ism, mature  idealism  will  certainly  find  out  how  to  return 
to  an  order  as  fixed  and  as  supreme  as  was  Spinoza's  sub- 
stance. 

Schelling,  finally,  the  prince  of  the  romanticists,  is  an 
interesting  example  of  a  growth  of  spirit  whereby  a  great 
thinker  was  indeed  led  from  Fichte  back  to  Spinoza. 
Only  to  the  end,  while  Schelling  became  the  firmest  of 
believers  in  a  supreme  and  substantial  order  of  things, 
which  impresses  itself  upon  our  reason  from  above,  and 
which  we  are  all  forced  to  obey  and  to  accept,  his  method 
remains  wayward,  imaginative,  and,  with  all  his  genius, 
immature.  His  Spinozism  is  such  as  Spinoza  could  never 
have  pretended  to  comprehend  ;  his  idealism  early  became 
such  as  to  excite  first  the  suspicion,  and  finally  the  vio- 
lent condemnation  of  Fichte  ;  and  his  whole  work  is  such 
as  only  a  great  genius  could  have  begun,  and  only  a 
romanticist  could  have  left  in  the  chaos  wherein,  after 
a  very  long  life,  he  finally  left  it. 

Even  our  brief  glance  at  Schelling's  character  must 
take  into  account  the  remarkable  woman  whose  counsel 
and  affection  made  a  great  part  of  his  most  productive 
years  possible.  I  doubt  whether  Schelling,  even  as  phi- 
losopher, can  be  well  understood  apart  from  Caroline. 
She  herself  was  the  idol  of  the  whole  romantic  circle. 
Her  maiden  name  was  Michaelis ;  she  was  twelve  years 
the  senior  of  Schelling.  When  Schelling  first  met  her, 
himself  then  early  in  his  twenties,  she  was  already  married 
a  second  time,  and  to  Augustus  Schlegel.  Her  daughter 
by  her  first  marriage,  Auguste  Bohmer,  died  in  1800, 
aged  seventeen.  As  Schlegel,  during  the  closing  years  of 
the  century,  lived  in  Berlin,  and  Caroline  in  Jena,  their 


182  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

marriage,  although  friendly,  was  not  precisely  the  first 
interest  of  either  member  of  the  wedded  pair.  The  ro- 
mantic school,  with  philosophical  consistency,  believed  in 
applying  their  principle  of  waywardness  to  marriage  also, 
and  approved  of  elective  affinities  ;  and  accordingly,  abso- 
lutely without  an  unkind  word,  the  marriage  of  the  Schle- 
gels  was  ultimately  dissolved  by  means  of  a  decree  of  the 
obliging  Duke  at  Weimar,  and  Schelling  married  Caro- 
line in  1803,  after  several  years  of  friendship  and  corre- 
spondence. Schelling  and  Caroline  remained  on  the  best 
terms  with  Augustus  Schlegel  until  Caroline's  death  in 
1809. 

Caroline's  letters  to  Schelling,  between  1799  and  1803, 
are  certainly  much  more  than  interesting.  The  wonderful 
charm  of  this  herrliche  Frau  is  once  for  all  an  irresisti- 
ble sensation  as  you  read  her  intimate  self-confessions. 
She  is  a  marvelous  compound  of  the  pathetic,  the  roguish, 
the  wise,  the  gay,  the  deeply  sad,  and  the  singularly 
thoughtful.  She  has  seen,  felt,  suffered,  struggled  ;  and 
she  has  conquered.  She  loves  power  intensely,  is  a  very 
good  hater,  and  yet,  she  has  also  a  childlike  and  playful 
gentleness  that  fairly  disarms  you.  When  she  is  deep  in 
trouble,  a  light  or  perhaps  a  bitter  laugh  is  never  far 
away,  wherewith  she  wins  again  her  composure.  She  is, 
in  her  romantic  fashion,  as  high-minded  as  she  is  abso- 
lutely fearless,  —  a  sort  of  Penthesilea,  only  vastly  more 
tender,  and  with  the  heart  of  a  bereaved  mother,  as  well 
as  with  the  temper  of  a  trained  warrior.  To  her  husband 
Schlegel,  in  Berlin,  she  writes  meanwhile  as  straightfor- 
wardly and  lengthily  as  you  please ;  only  to  him  she  has 
more  to  say  about  literary  matters.  Philosophy  she 
thought  of  often,  and  with  just  the  easy  swift  insight 
into  subtleties  which  must  have  enlightened  the  young 
Schelling  more  than  once.  Only  system-making  she  re- 
garded  with  indifference.  Hence  it  was,  in  part,  for  her 
admiration  that  Schelling  must  have  thought  out  his 


THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  IN   PHILOSOPHY.  183 

subtle,  but  unsystematic  fragments  of  philosophic  creation. 
They  frequently  discussed  such  matters  together.  Once 
in  conversation,  as  she  writes  in  1801  to  her  husband 
Schlegel,  she  and  Schelling  fell  to  inventing  an  appro- 
priate motto  in  verse  for  Fichte  (the  "  Sun-clear,"  as  she 
calls  him,  after  the  title  of  one  of  his  essays,  the  "  Sun 
clear  Exposition  of  the  Essence  of  Recent  Philosophy  "), 
whose  solemn  and  devout  appeals  to  his  readers  to  be 
honorable  men  for  once,  and  agree  with  him,  were  then 
growing  rather  wearisome.  They  hit  upon  Hamlet's  — 

"  Doubt  that  the  stars  are  fire, 
Doubt  that  the  plauets  move." 

That  had  an  idealistic  sound,  and  seemed  to  begin  a  fit- 
ting motto  for  Fichte.  They  took  these  lines,  of  course, 
in  the  current  German  translation,  and  then  Caroline's 
wit  wrought  out  this  as  the  whole  motto :  — 

"  Zweifle  an  der  Sonne  Klarheit, 
Zweifle  an  der  Sterne  Licht, 
Leser,  nur  an  meiner  Wahrheit 
Und  an  deiner  Dummheit  nicht." 

I  venture,  with  hesitation,  to  imitate  Caroline  in  Eng- 
lish, but  at  a  long  distance,  thus  :  — 

"  Doubt  that  the  stars  are  fire, 
Doubt  all  the  things  of  sense, 
But,  reader,  doubt  not  I  am  wise, 
And  thy  poor  wits  are  dense." 

But  Caroline  had  not  only  the  power  to  criticise  Fichte 
in  this  fashion  ;  she  knew  also  how  to  write  an  excellent 
contrast  between  Fichte's  genius  and  Schelling's,  as  fol- 
lows, in  a  letter  to  her  young  friend  himself,  who  did  not 
marry  her  until  two  years  later :  "  It  is  growing  more  and 
more  needful  now  that  you  produce  something  eternal, 
without  making  so  much  ado  about  it.  Surely,  my  dear- 
est friend,  you  are  n't  asking  my  opinion  about  Fichte's 
power,  although  you  seem  to  come  near  it.  I  have  always 
felt  that,  with  all  his  incomparable  skill  in  thinking,  he 


184  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY, 

has  his  limits ;  only,  as  I  have  thought,  the  reason  is  that 
he  fails  of  the  divine  instinct  that  you  possess  ;  and  if 
you  have  broken  through  his  charmed  circle,  then  I  feel 
as  if  it  was  not  so  much  because  you  are  a  philosopher, 
but  because  you  have  poetry  in  you,  while  he  has  none. 
I  suppose  I  use  the  word  '  philosopher '  wrongly.  If  I  do, 
laugh  at  me.  But  it  is  poetical  inspiration  that  has  led 
you  to  production,  as  it  is  simply  sharpness  of  seeing  that 
has  led  him  to  consciousness.  He  has  the  bright  light, 
but  you  have  the  glowing  fire ;  his  gift  can  illuminate, 
only  yours  can  produce.  There,  have  n't  I  put  that  right 
neatly  ?  As  if  one  should  see  an  immeasurable  landscape 
through  a  keyhole." 

You  will  now  indeed  be  anxious  to  learn  something  of 
how  Schelling  had  broken  through  Fichte's  charmed  cir- 
cle. "Well,  his  most  technical  thought  will  be  mentioned 
next  time,  when  I  compare  him  with  Hegel,  in  whose 
company  he  worked  for  a  brief,  but  important  period. 
For  this  most  significant  deed  of  Schelling's  can  only  be 
understood  in  his  relations  with  Hegel.  Of  Schelling,  the 
poetical  friend  of  Caroline,  and  the  brilliant  young  crea- 
tor of  the  so-called  Naturphilosophie,  I  have  yet  to  say 
a  word  to-day.  The  most  fruitful  problem  of  Fichte's 
system  was,  of  course,  the  problem  of  the  ^relation  of  my 
conscious  self  to  my  deeper  self,  of  my  private  thought 
to  the  universal  and  divine  thought,  whereof  I  am  ttfe 
transient  expression.  Now,  it  early  occurred  to  Schelling 
that  Fichte  had  not  made  all  that  he  could  of  this  rela- 
tion between  the  humanly  conscious  and  the  divine  Ego. 
My  external  world,  says  Fichte,  is  the  product  of  my  own 
unconscious  act;  and  this  act,  unconscious  to  me,  is 
ultimately  an  expression  of  God's  eternal  activity  itself. 
Well,  then,  is  not  the  true  idealism  this  ?  The  outer 
world  of  sense  has  no  existence  except  as  a  manifestation 
of  the  spirit.  And  there  is  but  one  spirit,  after  all ;  but 
this  spirit  extends  far  beyond  my  little  self.  He  is  the 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  IN   PHILOSOPHY.  185 

spirit  of  nature.  You  cannot  comprehend  him  if  you 
look  only  within.  In  you  he  is  indeed  the  same  that  he 
is  yonder  in  nature,  only  in  nature  his  will  is  writ  large, 
in  dead  and  in  living  forces,  in  gravitation,  in  magnetism, 
in  electricity,  in  vitality.  Study  these  things,  not  as  if 
they  were  ever  utterly  dead  things  in  themselves,  but  as 
being  other  expressions  of  precisely  the  same  life  that  is 
writ  fine  in  your  consciousness.  Thus,  by^reversingvaa 
it_wj3Tje_*Jthje_J[ichtean  telescope,  you  see  the  human  sub- 
ject indeed  as  the  central  being  of  the  human  world,  only^_ 
in  himself  he  now  appears  less  imposing.  Turning,  how- 
ever, the  right  end  of  the  glass  towards  nature,  you  see 
therein  the  life  of  humanity  typified,  symbolized,  crystal- 
lized, as  it  were ;  for  spirit  comes  to  itself  in  man  only 
because  it  has  first  expressed  itself  in  nature,  and  is  now 
striving  in  us  to  become  conscious  of  its  own  work.  Thus 
viewed,  man  is  indeed  simply  an  evolution  from  nature ; 
and  Schelling  indeed  holds  that  a  theory  of  the  evolution 
of  consciousness  is  needed  as  a  complement  to  Fichte's 
theory.  "  In  autumn,  1798,  I  entered  upon  my  lectures 
at  Jena,"  says  Schelling  himself,  in  one  of  his  autobio- 
graphical statements,  "full  of  the  thought  that  the  way 
from  nature  to  spirit  must  be  as  possible  as  the  reverse 
way,  upon  which  Fichte  had  entered."  Here,  then,  is 
Schelling's  epoch-making  idea,  and  you  will  see  hereafter 
that  it  is  the  idea  which  modern  philosophic  thought  will 
henceforth  be  seeking  to  define.  Tocomplete_  the  under- 
taking of  idealism,  you  need  a  theory  of  the  facts  of 
nature,  so  interpreted  as  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  view  - 
that  only  ideas  are  the  realities^  and  yet  so  adapted  to 
experience  asTto  free  your  idealism  from  the  arbitrariness 
of  the  inner  life  of  mere  finite  selves.  Can  we,  then, 
prove  that  the  very  spirit  whose  life  our  own  conscious* 
ness  expresses  is  already  present  outside  and  beyond  us, 
weaving  the  web  of  the  external  world,  giving  it  sub- 
stance, and  yet  preserving  its  ideality  and  its  harmony 


186  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

with  our  inner  life?  If  we  can,  then,  our  doctrJ3fi_will 
become  what  is  technically  called  objective_idealisni.. 
The  outer  world  is,  then,  God's  thought  shown  to  our 
eyes  ;  the  inner  world  is  God's  thought  become  conscious 
of  itself.  This  doctrine  was  the  centre  of  Schelling's 
Naturphilosophie.  Unfortunately  he  was  no  man  to 
prove  such  a  theory.  He  could  only  suggest,  develop 
imaginatively,  and  in  later  essays  treat  with  a  marvelous, 
but  fragmentary  technical  skill.  As  poet,  he  indeed 
broke  through  Fichte's  charmed  circle ;  but  as  poet,  he 
never  stated  the  essence  of  his  NaturpJiilo&ophie  more 
clearly  or  more  boldly  than  he  did  in  a  poetic  fragment 
written  under  the  eyes  of  Caroline,  and  meant  largely  for 
her  approval.  Of  this  production  he  himself  never  pub- 
lished more  than  a  brief  portion ;  in  later  years  it  has 
been  printed  from  his  papers.  I  refer  to  his  whimsically 
so-called  Epikurisch  Glaubensbekenntniss  Heinz  Wider- 
porstens,  "  Epicurean  Confession  of  Faith  of  Hans  Bris- 
tleback." 

In  this  thoroughly  wayward  sketch  in  verse,  Schelling 
assumes  a  grotesque  name  and  character,  in  order  to  give 
himself  greater  freedom  to  express  the  heart  of  his 
Naturphilosophie  in  the  boldest  and  most  pantheistic 
terms.  The  meter  is  borrowed  from  the  well-known  re- 
vival, in  Goethe's  "  Faust,"  of  the  old  Knittelvers,  or 
free  rhyme  of  early  German  poetry.  Schelling's  hero, 
in  whose  character  he  speaks,  is  supposed  to  be  trying  to 
play  the  irreligious  materialist,  whom  the  priests  have 
been  driving  to  despair,  and  who  at  last  rebels.  Nature 
is  his  religion,  he  says.  He  loves  good  cheer  and  fair 
faces,  and  he  hates  superstition.  Is  n't  this  world  of  the 
senses  after  all  the  genuine  thing  ?  Heinz  grows  fairly 
rollicking  in  his  materialistic  and  epicurean  speeches. 
Suddenly,  without  warning,  he  assumes  another  tone, 
From  beneath  the  mask  of  the  epicurean,  the  voice  of  the 
romantic  mystic  sounds.  TFAy,  then,  is  this  world  of 


THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL   IN   PHILOSOPHY.  187 

the  senses  the  world  for  the  truly  wise  man  ?  Because  it 
is  but  the  embodiment  of  one  eternal  and  divine  spirit. 
Then  follows  a  Schellingian  sketch  of  a  process  of  evo- 
lution which,  proceeding  through  the  animals,  culminates 
in  us.  The  world  of  nature  is  thus  full  of  the  struggle 
of  the  great  spirit  to  win  his  own  higher  life.  The  end 
and  crown  of  this  whole  process  is  man.  In  him,  blind 
nature  gets  a  voice  ;  in  him  the  spirit  comes  to  himself. 
And  all  the  universe  is  one  glorious  life,  in  whose  con- 
templation the  mystic  soul  rejoices. 

Let  me  give  you,  as  a  close,  my  own  hasty  rendering  of 
some  of  Schelling's  curious  lines,  with  a  certain  effort  to 
preserve  the  unequal  metre  and  even  the  very  unequal 
worth  of  the  original.  The  Knittelvers,  at  its  noblest,  is 
only  a  sort  of  glorified  doggerel,  and  is  never  easy  to  man- 
age in  translation  ;  but  I  must  suggest  to  you  a  little  of 
the  romantic  intoxication  of  this  sort  of  pantheism,  so 
characteristic  of  one  great  tendency  in  German  thought. 

After  his  introductory  denunciation  of  priestcraft,  asce- 
ticism, and  superstition,  the  gay  Heinz  is  made  to  run  on 
thus,  speaking  of  course  in  character  :  — 

"  Therefore  religion  I  forsake, 
All  superstitious  ties  I  break, 
No  church  will  I  visit  to  hear  them  preach, 
I  have  done  with  all  that  the  parsons  teach. 
And  yet  there  is  one  faith  that  masters  my  willy 
Glows  in  my  verse,  and  inspires  me  still, 
Daily  my  heart  with  delight  doth  thrill, 
Eternally  showing 
New  form  ;  till  I  knowing, 
This  faith  so  clear, 
This  light  so  near, 
This  poem  undying, 
Must  witness  its  truth  beyond  denying ; 
So  that  I  can  nothing  hold  nor  conceive 
Save  what  it  counsels  me  to  believe  ; 
Nor  aught  as  certain  or  right  maintain, 
Save  what  it  reveals  to  my  eyes  so  plain. 


188  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 


Thus,  then,  in  my  heart  am  I  freed  from  fear, 

Sound  in  body  and  soul  stand  here, 

And  may,  instead  of  posture  and  prayer, 

Instead  of  losing  my  way  in  the  air, 

Here  on  the  earth,  in  her  blue  eyes  see 

The  deepest  depths  that  exist  for  me. 

Nay,  and  why  should  I  in  the  world  suffer  dread, 

I,  who  know  the  world  from  the  foot  to  the  head  ¥ 

'T  is  a  tame  creature,  is  it  not  ? 

When  has  it  ever  its  bonds  forgot  ? 

Yields  to  the  yoke  of  all-ruling  law, 

Crouches  at  my  feet  in  awe. 

Within  it  a  giant  spirit  doth  dream, 
But  his  soul  is  a  frozen  lava  stream  ; l 
From  his  narrow  house  he  cannot  away, 
Nor  his  iron  chains  escape  for  a  day. 
Yet  often  he  flutters  his  wings  in  his  sleep, 
Mightily  stirs  in  his  dungeon-keep, 
Travails  in  dead  and  in  living  things 
To  know  his  will  and  to  free  his  wings.2 

His  power,  that  fills  the  veins  with  ore, 

And  renews  in  the  spring  the  buds  once  more, 

Labors  unceasing  in  darkness  and  night, 

In  all  nature's  nooks  and  crannies  for  light, 

Fears  no  pang  in  its  fierce  desire 

To  live  and  to  conquer  and  win  its  way  higher. 

Organs  and  members  it  fashions  anew, 

Lengthens  or  shortens,  makes  many  or  few, 

And  wrestles  and  writhes  in  its  search  till  it  find 

The  form  that  is  worthiest  of  its  mind. 

Struggling  thus  on  life  intent, 

Against  a  cruel  environment, 

It  triumphs  at  last,  in  one  narrow  space, 

And  comes  to  itself  in  a  dwarfish  race, 

That,  fair  of  form,  of  stature  erect, 

Stands  on  earth  as  the  giant's  elect, 

1  "  Steckt  zwar  ein  Riesengeist  darinnen. 

1st  aber  versteinert  mit  seinen  Sinnen." 

2  "  In  todten  und  lebendigen  Dingen 

That  nach  Bewusstseyn  machtig  ringen/'* 


THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  IN   PHILOSOPHY.  189 

Is  called  in  our  speech  the  son  of  man, 

Outcome  and  crown  of  the  spirit's  plan. 

From  iron  slumber,  from  dreaming  set  free, 

Now  marvels  the  spirit  who  he  may  be. 

Looks  on  himself  with  wondering  gaze, 

Measures  his  limbs  in  dim  amaze, 

Longs  in  terror  once  more  to  be  hid 

In  nature's  slumber,  of  sentience  rid. 

But  nay,  his  freedom  is  won  for  aye, 

No  more  in  nature's  peace  may  he  lie  ; 

In  the  vast  dark  world  that  is  all  his  own, 

He  wanders  his  life's  narrow  path  alone. 

Yes,  he  even  fears,  in  his  visions  dim, 

That  the  giant  himself  may  be  wroth  with  him, 

And  like  Saturn  of  old,  in  godlike  scorn, 

Devour  his  children  scarcely  born  ; 

Know  not  that  he  himself  is  the  Sprite 

That  longingly  toiled  in  the  world's  dark  night ; 

Peoples  the  void  with  the  ghosts  of  his  fear, 

Yet  could  he  say,  the  Giant's  peer  :  — 

I  am  the  God  who  nature's  bosom  fills, 

I  am  the  life  that  in  her  heart's  blood  thrills.1 

From  the  first  quiver  of  her  mystic  power, 

Until  of  life  there  came  that  primal  hour, 

When  force  new  form  and  body  power  assumed, 

And  flowers  the  beauty  showed  that  lay  entombed,  «• 

Yes,  now,  wherever  light,  as  dawn  begins, 

A  new  created  world  from  chaos  wins,  — 

And  in  the  thousand  eyes  that,  from  the  sky, 

Show  night  and  day  the  heavenly  mystery,  — 

Onwards,  to  where,  in  thought's  eternal  truth 

Nature's  deep  self  rewords  itself  in  truth,  — 

There  stirs  one  might,  one  pulse-beat  all  sufficing, 

All  power  retaining,  aye,  —  and  sacrificing." 

1  "  Ich  bin  der  Gott  der  sie  im  Busen  trapt, 
Der  Qeist  der  sich  in  allem  bewegt." 


LECTURE  VII. 

HEGEL. 

CONCERNING  Hegel,  who  forms  our  special  topic  in  this 
lecture,  it  is  extraordinarily  difficult  to  get  or  to  give  any 
general  impressions  that  will  not  be  seriously  misleading. 
I  undertake  my  task,  therefore,  with  a  very  strong  impres- 
sion of  its  importance  and  its  difficulty.  The  outcome  of 
what  we  have  thus  far  discussed  in  these  lectures  is  briefly 
this :  Modern  thought  began  with  an  endeavor  to  find- a. 
true  and  rational  doctrine  about  the  real  outer  universe, 
and  to  state  this  doctrine  in  clear  and  even  mathematical 
form.  The  rediscovery  of  the  importance  of  the  inner 
life  led,  however,  during  the  eighteenth  century, _to_a_ 
skeptical  scrutiny  of  the  powers  of  the  human  reason  it- 
self, and  the  magnificent  systems  of  earlier  thinkers  ap- 
peared, when  examined  in  the  light  of  such  scrutiny, 
dogmatic  and  uncertain.  Thought  endeavored,  neverthe- 
less, to  re-win  its  great  assurances  in  a  new  form.  Truth, 
said  Idealism,  is  essentially  an  affair  of  the  inner  life. 
The  world  of  truth  is  the  world  as  it  would  appear  to  a 
complete  and  fully  self-conscious  self.  The  outer  uni- 
verse is  only  a  show  world.  Its  reality  is  only  practical. 
It  is  essentially  a  mirage  of  the  inner  life.  The  real 
universe  is  the  universe  of  the  spirit.  Our  deepest  rela- 
tion is  not  to  the  natural  order  at  all,  but  to  the  one  true 
self,  namely,  God's  own  life. 

Such,  as  we  found,  was  the  position  reached  alike  by 
Fichte  and  the  romanticists.  But  in  their  further  thought 
they  diverged.  For  Fichte,  the  centre  of  the  universe,  as 


HEGEL.  191 

Iiis  idealism  conceives  it,  is  the  moral  law.  The  infinite 
self  longs  for  rational  and  active  self-possession.  Hence 
it  differentiates  itself  into  numerous  forms,  as  the  vine 
grows  out  into  its  own  branches.  These  branchings  of 
the  one  great  vine  of  the  spirit  form  our  finite  and  essen- 
tially incomplete  selves. 

But  for  the  romanticists^aa  we  found,  the  centre  of  the 
world  is  not  so  much  the  moral  law  as  the  interest  which 
every  spirit  has  in  a  certain  divine  wealth  ofiTemotioji/and 
of  experience.  The  world  is  the  world  of  ideas ;  things 
exist  because  spirits  experience  them ;  and  spirits  experi- 
ence  because,  as  parts  of  the  divinely  complete  life,  it  is  __ 
their  interest  to  be  as  manifold  and  wealthy  in  their  self- 
realization  as  possible. 

I. 

^ 

Before  we  now  pass  directly  to  Hegel  it  is  necessary 
to  say  yet  a  word  of  the  more  technical  speculations  of 
Schelling,  of  whom,  in  his  character  as  romanticist,  we 
heard  something  in  the  last  lecture.  Schelling's  develop- 
ment, as  you  already  know,  was  .very  rapid  ;  his  writings 
were  early  voluminous.  He  was  a  man  of  mark  and  a 
professor  at  Jena  by  the  time  he  had  reached  his  twenty- 
third  year.  His  systematic  views  during  his  youthful  pe- 
riod seemed  to  his  readers  to  alter  with  a  dangerously 
magical  ease  and  swiftness  of  transformation.  He  him- 
self meanwhile  denied,  during  the  years  up  to  1809,  that 
there  was  so  far  any  significant  change  from  the  essential 
doctrines  of  his  early  works.  He  had  added,  he  said,  to 
what  he  at  first  taught.  More  truth  had  come  to  him ; 
not  a  contradiction  of  former  insight.  But  readers  found 
it  suspicious  that  each  new  book  of  Schelling's  seemed  to 
supersede  all  his  previous  efforts.  In  1797,  he  published 
his  "  Tcleas  towards  a  Philosophy  of  Nature."  During 
the  next  three  years  appeared  his  "  System  of  Transcen- 
dental Idealism  "  and  his  "  First  Sketch  of  a  System  of 
the  Philosophy  of  Nature."  These  two  latter  works  were 


192  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

to  be  a  first  statement,  so  their  author  declared,  of  the 
two  great  and  seemingly  opposed  aspects  of  philosophy. 
The  outer  world  was  to  be  shown  as  after  all  the  mani- 
festation of  spirit ;  the  inner  world  of  the  self  was  to  be 
exhibited  as  inevitably  expressing  itself  in  relation  to  an 
outer,  a  natural  order.  The  fundamental  thought  of  the 
whole  doctrine  was  in  substance  this :  Fichte  had  declared 
that  it  is  the  self-assertion  of  the  absolute  self,  the  free 
choice  of  the  true  Ego,  that  is  the  source  of  all  truth. 
When  I  as  knower  recognize  a  truth,  that  is  because  I  as 
doer  have  first  made  this  truth.  This  view  Schelling  also 
accepts.  But  now,  as  one  sees,  a  conscious  self  is  at  once 
the  doer  of  its  present  act,  and  the  contemplator  of  the 
results  of  its  past  acts.  As  I  look  out  on  the  world  of 
nature,  I  see  crystallized  before  me  the  expression  of  what 
my  true  and  absolute  self  has  already  been  doing.  The 
same  activity  that  this  present  consciousness  exemplifies 
for  me  has  been  there  from  eternity,  and  nature  is  the 
concrete  embodiment  to  the  onlooker  of  the  results  of  his 
own  eternal  deeds.  Nature  then  is  not  merely,  as  Fichte 
bad  said,  my  duty  made  manifest  to  my  senses ;  it  is  also 
iny  timelessly  past  spiritual  life, —  not  of  course  my  finite 
or  individual  and  private  past  life,  but  the  life  of  my 
deeper  self,  of  the  one  and  absolute  divine  spirit.  This 
autobiography  of  spirit,  manifest  to  our  eyes,  is  then  the 
natural  order.  On  the  other  hand,  the  inner  life  as  such 
is  capable  of  a  philosophical  treatment ;  for  this  is,  as  it 
were,  not  the  record  of  the  spirit's  past,  but  the  fullness 
of  the  spirit's  conscious  actuality.  We  have  thus  a  two- 
fold philosophy  to  be  wrought  out,  and  Schelliug  in  1799 
and  1800  publishes  his  two  sketches  as  though  in  topic, 
if  not  in  execution,  they  completely  covered  the  ground. 
But  in  1801  appeared  a  new  treatise,  called  by  Schelling 
simply  "  Exposition  of  my  System  of  Philosophy,"  and 
here  the  doctrine  seems  to  take  a  new  form,  which  readers 
could  only  with  great  difficulty  reconcile  with  what  had 


HEGEL.  193 

gone  before.  As  during  the  winter  of  1800-1801  Schel- 
ling  expounded  this  system  in  lectures,  before  publishing 
the  treatise,  hearers  asserted,  as  Schelling  himself  says, 
that  he  had  wholly  changed  his  doctrine.  On  the  con- 
trary, says  Schelling,  in  his  preface  to  the  new  book,  this 
is  the  system  that  I  have  held  all  along,  and  have  merely 
been  keeping  to  myself  so  far,  because  it  was  too  deep  a 
thing  to  expound  before  the  time  came.  The  system  in 
question  was  called  by  its  author  the  Identitats -System. 
Deeper  than  both  nature  and  spirit  is  now  something  that 
Schelling  calls  by  various  mysterious  names,  the  "  Abso- 
lute," the  "  Identity,"  the  "  Indifference  of  Subject  and 
Object,"  the  "  Unity  of  Nature  and  Spirit."  It  is  a  curi- 
ous metaphysical  product,  this  new  principle.  It  resem- 
bles Spinoza's  Substance ;  it  pretends  to  be  loftier  than 
Fichte's  Divine  Self.  It  is  something  even  dimmer  and 
vaguer  than  the  Giant  Spirit  of  Nature,  of  whom  Schel- 
liug's  verses  told  us  in  the  last  lecture.  Hegel,  a  few 
years  later,  rudely  called  this  Schellingian  "  Identity," 
this  "  Absolute,"  in  whose  indescribable  nature  all  truth 
was  to  be  somehow  hidden,  "  the  infinite  night  in  which 
all  cows  are  black."  [Its  nature  was  the  kind  of  thing 
you  think  of  when  you  think  of  nothing  in  particular/]  ^ 
Yet  this  nature  of  the  absolute  was  to  be  the  deepest  of 
all  truth,  deeper  than  the  self,  deeper  than  outer  nature, 
deeper  than  anything  ever  before  known  in  philosophy. 

I  am  not  minded  to  trouble  you  here  with  a  fuller  ac- 
count of  Schelling's  Identitats- System,  whose  exposition, 
as  it  chances,  is  really  very  deep  and  suggestive,  with 
all  its  vagueness.  The  thought  that  there  must  after  all 
be  some  sort  of  ( synthesis  ,  possible  of  Kant  and  Spi- 
noza, was  indeed  an  important  thought.  And  historically 
the  Identitats- System  has  a  very  significant  relation  to 
Hegel's  thinking.  For  Schelling  wrote  this  new  treatise 
under  the  direct  influence  of  his  intercourse  with  Hegel, 
who  had  then  appeared  at  Jena,  where  Schelling  was 


194  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

teaching.  What  Hegel  maintained,  and  early  impressed 
upon  Schelling,  was  that  an  end  must  be  put,  if  possible, 
to  the  romantic  vagueness  of  all  this  dreaming  about  the 
relations  of  the  individual  and  the  absolute  self,  and  about 
the  conceptions  of  the  finite  and  the  infinite  in  general. 
What  philosophy  needed  was  a  more  exact  analysis  and 
proof  of  the  assertion  that  the  individual  consciousness 
and  the  outer  order,  the  finite  self  and  the  infinite  self, 
the  world  of  the  moment  and  the  world  of  the  universal, 
are  linked  in  close  spiritual  ties.  Philosophy  must  be- 
come a  system,  or  else  remain  naught.  This  thought 
Schelling  found  present  in  Hegel's  mind,  and  so  Schelling 
for  the  moment  forced  his  poetical  speculations  to  assume 
a  Spinozistic  garb.  Largely  ineffective,  however,  Schel- 
ling's  best  efforts  remained  thenceforth.  We  shall  do 
well,  therefore,  to  turn  at  once  to  the  more  successful  sys- 
tematizer  of  the  idealistic  scheme,  namely,  Hegel. 

r  ' 

With  the  idealists  of  the  romantic  school  Hegel  had, 
indeed,  many  things  in  common,  but  he  differed  from 
them  profoundly  in  temperament.  They  had  reached 
their  absolute  self  by  various  mystical  or  otherwise  too 
facile  methods,  which  we  need  not  further  expound. 
Hegel  hated  easy  roads  in  philosophy,  and  abhorred  mys- 
ticism. He  therefore,  at  first,  in  his  private  studies,  had 
clung  closely  to  Kant's  original  mode  of  dealing  with  the 
problems  of  the  new  philosophy  until  he  had  found  his 
own  fashion  of  reflection.  To  understand  what  this  fash- 
ion was  we  must  turn  to  the  man  himself. 

Yet,  as  I  now  come  to  speak  of  Hegel's  temperament, 
I  must  at  once  point  out  that  of  all  first-class  thinkers  he 
is,  indeed,  personally,  one  of  the  least  imposing  in  charac- 
ter and  life.1  Kant  was  a  man  whose  intellectual  might 

1  The  expert  reader  will  easily  detect  the  influence  of  Haym  and 
of  Dr.  Hutchiuson  Stirling's  estimates  of  Hegel's  personality  in  what 


HEGEL.  195 

and  heroic  moral  elevation  stood  in  a  contrast  to  the 
weakness  of  his  bodily  presence,  which,  after  all,  had 
something  of  the  sublime  about  it.  Spinoza's  lonely, 
almost  princely,  haughtiness  of  intellect  joins  with  his 
religious  mysticism  to  give  his  form  grace,  and  his  very 
isolation  nobility.  But  Hegel  is  in  no  wise  either  graceful 
or  heroic  in  bearing.  His  dignity  is  solely  the  dignity  of 
his  work.  Apart  from  his  achievement,  and  his  tempera- 
ment as  making  it  possible,  there  is  extremely  little  of 
mark  in  the  man.  The  wonder  of  him  lies  in  his  profes- 
sional, not  in  his  human  aspect.  He  was  a  keen-witted 
Suabian,  a  born  scholar,  a  successful  teacher,  self-pos- 
sessed, decidedly  crafty,  merciless  to  his  enemies,  quarrel- 
some on  occasion  after  the  rather  crude  fashion  of  the 
German  scholar,  sedate  and  methodical  in  the  rest  of  his 
official  life ;  a  rather  sharp  disciplinarian  when  he  had  to 
deal  with  young  people  or  with  subordinates  ;  a  trifle  ser- 
_vile^  when  he  had  to  deal  with  official  or  with  social  supe- 
riors. From  his  biographer,  Rosenkranz,  we  learn  of  him 
in  many  private  capacities  ;  he  interests  us  in  hardly  any 
of  them.  He  was  no  patriot,  like  Fichte ;  no  romantic 
dreamer,  like  Novalis;  no  poetic  seer  of  splendid  meta- 
physical visions,  like  Schelling.  His  career  is  absolutely 
devoid  of  romance.  We  even  have  one  or  two  of  his  love- 
letters.  They  are  awkward  and  dreary  beyond  measure. 
His  inner  life  either  had  no  crises,  or  concealed  them 
obstinately.  In  his  dealings  with  his  friends,  as,  for 
instance,  with  Schelling,  he  was  wily  and  masterful,  using 
men  for  his  advantage  so  long  as  he  needed  them,  and 
turning  upon  them  without  scruple  when  they  could  no 
longer  serve  his  ends.  His  life,  in  its  official  character, 
was  indeed  blameless.  He  was  a  faithful  servant  of  his 

follows.  The  reader  who  desires  a  more  eulogistic  account  will  find 
such,  and  from  a  high  authority  too,  in  Professor  Edward  Caird's 
discussion  of  Hegel  in  the  volume  on  that  thinker  in  Blaekwood'a 
Philosophical  Classics. 


196  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

various  successive  masters,  and  unquestionably  he  reaped 
his  worldly  reward.  His  students  flattered  him,  and 
therefore  he  treated  them  well ;  but  towards  opponents 
he  showed  scant  courtesy.  To  the  end  he  remains  a  self- 
seeking,  determined,  laborious,  critical,  unaffectionate 
man,  faithful  to  his  office  and  to  his  household,  loyal  to 
his  employers,  cruel  to  his  foes.  In  controversy  he  spared 
not  persons  any  more  than  doctrines.  His  style  in  his  pub- 
lished books  is  not  without  its  deep  ingenuity  and  its  mar- 
velous accuracy,  but  otherwise  is  notoriously  one  of  the 
most  barbarous,  technical,  and  obscure  in  the  whole  his- 
tory of  philosophy.  If  his  lectures  are  more  easy-flowing 
and  genial,  they  are  in  the  end,  and  as  a  whole,  hardly 
more  comprehensible.  He  does  little  to  attract  his  reader, 
and  everything  to  make  the  road  long  and  painful  to  the 
student.  All  this  is  not  awkwardness ;  it  is  deliberate 
choice.  He  is  proud  of  his  barbarism.  And  yet  —  here 
is  the  miracle  —  this  unattractive  and  unheroic  person 
is  one  of  the  most  noteworthy  of  all  the  chosen  instru- 
ments through  which,  in  our  times,  the  spirit  has  spoken. 
It  is  not  ours  to  comprehend  this  wind  that  bloweth 
where  it  listeth.  We  have  only  to  hear  the  sound  thereof. 
Georg  Wilhelm  Friedrich  Hegel  was  born  in  August, 
1770,  at  Stuttgart.  His  family  was  of  a  representative 
Suabian  type  ;  his  own  early  surroundings  were  favorable 
to  an  industrious,  but  highly  pedantic  sort  of  learning. 
At  the  gymnasium  in  Stuttgart,  which  he  attended  from 
his  seventh  year,  he  was  an  extraordinarily,  but,  on  the 
whole,  a  very  healthily  studious  boy.  From  his  fifteenth 
until  well  on  in  his  seventeenth  year,  we  find  him  keeping 
a  diary,  from  which  Rosenkranz  has  published  large  frag- 
ments. It  is  in  strong  contrast  to  the  sentimental  diaries 
that  the  characteristic  youth  of  genius,  in  those  days, 
might  be  expected  to  keep.  In  fact  there  was  no  promise 
of  genius,  so  far,  in  the  young  Hegel.  His  diary  runs  on 
much  after  this  fashion:  "Tuesday,  June  28  (1785),  I 


HEGEL.  197 

observed  to-day  what  different  impressions  the  same  thing 
can  make  on  different  people.  ...  I  was  eating  cherries 
with  excellent  appetite,  and  having  a  very  good  time,  .  .  . 
when  somebody  else,  older  than  I,  to  be  sure,  looked  on 
with  indifference,  and  said  that  in  youth  one  thinks  that 
one  cannot  possibly  pass  a  cherry-woman  without  having 
one's  mouth  water  for  the  cherries  (as  we  Suahians  say), 
whereas,  in  more  advanced  years  one  can  let  a  whole 
spring  pass  without  feeling  an  equal  longing  for  such 
things.  Whereupon  I  thought  out  the  following  princi- 
ple, a  rather  painful  one  for  me,  but  still  a  very  profound 
one,  namely,  that  in  youth  .  .  .  one  can't  eat  as  much  as 
one  wants,  while  in  age  one  does  n't  want  to  eat  as  much 
as  one  can." 

Such  was  the  philosopher  Hegel,  at  fifteen  years  of  age. 
His  diary  never  records  a  genuine  event.  Nothing  seems 
to  have  happened  to  this  young  devourer  of  cherries  and 
learning,  except  such  marvels  as  that  one  day  at  church 
he  learned  the  date  of  the  Augsburg  Confession ;  or  that, 
during  a  walk,  one  of  his  teachers  told  him  how  every 
good  thing  has  its  bad  side ;  and  again,  during  another 
walk,  tried  to  explain  to  him  why  July  and  August  are 
hotter  than  June.  Of  such  matters  the  diary  is  full,  — 
never  does  one  learn  of  an  inner  experience  of  any  signifi- 
cance. Aspirations  are  banished.  The  boy  is  pedantic 
enough,  not  to  say  out  and  out  a  prig ;  but  this  at  any 
rate  appears  as  the  distinctive  feature  of  his  tempera- 
ment :  he  is  thoroughly  objective.  He  wants  to  know  life 
as  it  is  in  itself,  not  as  it  is  for  him  ;  he  desires  the  true 
principles  of  things,  not  his  private  and  sentimental  inter- 
pretation of  them.  Meanwhile,  he  is  at  once  well  in- 
structed in  religious  faith,  and  given  so  far  to  the  then 
popular  and  rather  shallow  rationalism  which  loved  to 
make  very  easy  work  of  the  mysterious  of  every  kind  and 
grade.  He  devotes  some  space  to  the  explanation  of 
ghost  stories.  He  even  records,  meanwhile,  occasional 


198  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

bits  of  dry  Suabian  humor,  such  as  later,  in  a  much 
improved  form,  found  place  in  his  academic  lectures,  and 
were  so  characteristic  of  his  style,  not  to  say  of  his  system. 
The  boyish  form  of  this  interest  in  the  grotesque  may  be 
thus  exemplified :  January  3,  1787.  —  Total  eclipse  of 
the  moon ;  instruments  prepared  at  the  gymnasium,  where 
some  gathered  to  see,  but  the  sky  was  too  cloudy.  So 
the  rector  "  told  us  the  following :  As  a  boy  he  himself 
had  once  gone  out  with  other  boys,  at  night,  on  the  pre- 
tence of  star-gazing.  In  reality  they  had  only  wandered 
about.  The  police  found  them,  and  were  going  to  take 
them  into  custody ;  but  the  gymnasium  boys  said, 
'  We  're  out  star-gazing.'  '  Nay,'  responded  the  police, 
'  but  you  boys  ought  to  go  to  bed  at  night,  and  do  your 
star-gazing  in  the  day-time  I '  '  I  note  this  trifle  because, 
after  all,  it  means  more  than  one  would  think.  Here  and 
at  other  places  in  the  young  Hegel's  record  appear 
glimpses  of  a  certain  deg£_  delight  in_jh£-paradijxical»ja 
delight  which,  at  times  merely  dry  and  humorous,  at 
times  keenly  intellectual,  would  mean  little  in  another 
temperament,  but  which  is,  after  all,  the  determining  ten- 
dency of  Hegel's  mind. 

In  fact,  if  one  has  eyes  to  see  it,  the  Hegelian  tempera- 
ment, although  not  at  all  the  Hegelian  depth,  is,  even  as 
early  as  this,  almost  completely  indicated.  Of  the  later 
philosophical  genius,  as  I  have  said,  there  is  so  far  no 
promise ;  but  the  general  attitude  which  this  genius  was 
to  render  so  significant  is  already  taken  by  the  boy  Hegel. 
The  traits  present  are,  for  the  first  an  enormous  intellec- 
tual accpiisitiYe_Qesa»_.which  finds  every  sort  of  learning, 
but  above  all  every  sort  of  literary  and  humane  learning, 
extremely  interesting.  The  pedantry  which  oppresses  the 
German  gymnasiast  of  that  day  is  relieved,  meanwhile,  by 
this  dry  and  sarcastic  Suabian  humor,  which  notes  the 
oddities  and  stupidities  of  human  nature  with  a  keen 
appreciation.  The  humor  involves  a  love  of  the  gro» 


HEGEL.  199 

tesque,  of  the  paradoxical,  of  the  eternally  self-contradic- 
tory in  human  life.  The  mature  Hegel  was  to  discover 
the  deeper  meaning  of  such  paradoxes ;  for  the  time  being 
he  simply  notes  them.  For  the  rest,  there  is  one  trait 
already  manifest  which  is  also  of  no  small  significance  in 
Hegel's  life-work.  This  is  a  certain  observant  sensitive- 
ness to  all  manner  of  conscious  processes  in  other  people, 
joined  with  a  singularly  cool  and  impersonal  aptitude  for 
criticising  these  processes.  Here,  indeed,  is  a  feature 
about  Hegel  which  later,  in  his  mature  wisdom,  assumed  a 
very  prominent  place,  and  which  always  makes  him,  even 
apart  from  his  style,  very  hard  for  some  people  to  com- 
prehend. We  are  used  in  literature  to  the  man  who  sym- 
pathizes personally  with  the  passions  of  his  fellows,  and 
who  thus  knows  their  hearts  because  of  the  warmth  of  his 
own  heart.  We  know  also  something  of  the  tragically 
cynical  type  of  man,  who,  like  Swift,  not  because  he  is 
insensitive,  but  because  he  is  embittered,  sees,  or  chooses 
to  describe  in  passion,  only  its  follies.  We  have  all  about 
us,  moreover,  the  simply  unfeeling,  to  whom  passion  is  an 
impenetrable  mystery,  because  they  are  naturally  blind  to 
its  depth  and  value.  But  Hegel's  type  is  one  of  the  rai- 
est,  the  one,  namely,  whose  representative  man  will,  so  to 
speak,  tell  you  in  a  few  preternaturally  accurate,  though 
perhaps  highly  technical  words,  all  that  ever  you  did,  who 
will  seem  to  sound  your  heart  very  much  as  a  skillful 
specialist  in  nervous  diseases  would  sound  the  mysterious 
and  secret  depths  of  a  morbid  patient's  consciousness ;  but 
who,  all  the  while,  is  apparently  himself  as  free  from  deep 
personal  experiences  of  an  emotional  type  as  the  Jihyjician, 
is  free  from  his  patient's  morbid  and  nervous  web-spin- 
ning. Hegel  has  this  quasi-professional  type  of  sensitive- 
ness about  his  whole  bearing  towards  life.  Nobody 
keener  or  more  delicately  alive  and  watchful  than  he  to- 
comprehend,  but  also  nobody  more  merciless  to  dissect, 
the  wisest  and  the  tenderest  passions  of  the  heart.  And 


200  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

yet,  it  is  not  all  mercilessness  in  his  case.  When  he  has 
analyzed,  he  does  not  condemn  after  the  cynic's  fashion. 
After  the  dissection  comes  reconstruction.  He  singles 
out  what  he  takes  to  be  the  truly  humane  in  passion,  he 
describes  the  artistic  or  the  religious  interests  of  man,  he 
pictures  the  more  admirable  forms  of  self-consciousness  ; 
and  now,  indeed,  his  speech  may  assume  at  moments  a 
religious,  even  a  mystical  tone.  He  praises,  he  depicts 
approvingly,  he  admires  the  absolute  worth  of  these 
things.  You  feel  that  at  last  you  have  found  his  heart 
also  in  a  glow.  But  no ;  this,  too,  is  an  illusion.  A  word 
erelong  undeceives  you  as  to  his  personal  attitude.  He 
is  only  engaged  in  his  trade  as  shrewd  professor ;  he  is 
only  telling  you  the  true  and  objective  value  of  things ; 
he  is  not  making  any  serious  expression  of  his  own  piety 
or  wealth  of  concern.  He  is  still  the  critic.  His  admira- 
tion was  the  approval  of  the  onlooker.  In  his  private 
person  he  remains  what  he  was  before,  untouched  by  the 
glow  of  heart  of  the  very  seraphs  themselves. 

In  the  year  1788,  Hegel  entered  the  university  of  his 
province  at  Tubingen.  Here  he  studied  until  1793,  being 
somewhat  interrupted  in  his  academic  work  by  ill  health. 
His  principal  study  was  theology.  A  certificate  given  him 
at  the  conclusion  of  his  course  declared  that  he  was  a  man 
of  some  gifts  and  industry,  but  that  he  had  paid  no  seri- 
ous attention  to  philosophy.  His  reading,  however,  had 
been  very  varied.  In  addition  to  theology,  he  had  shown 
a  great  fondness  for  the  Greek  tragedians.  His  most  in- 
timate student  friends  of  note  had  been  the  young  poet 
Holderlin  and  Schelling  himself.  Nobody  had  yet  de- 
tected any  element  of  greatness  in  Hegel.  The  friend- 
ship with  Schelling  was  now  continued  in  the  form  of  a 
correspondence,  which  lasted  while  Hegel,  as  an  obscure 
family  tutor,  passed  the  years  from  1793  to  1796  in  Swit- 
zerland, and  then,  in  a  similar  capacity,  worked  in  Frank- 
fort-on-the-Main  until  the  end  of  1800,  when,  through 


HEGEL.  201 

Schelling's  assistance,  he  found  an  opportunity  to  enter 
upon  an  academic  career  at  the  University  of  Jena.  Dur- 
ing all  these  years  Hegel  matured  slowly,  and  printed 
nothing.  The  letters  to  Schelling  are  throughout  written 
in  a  flattering  and  receptive  tone.  Philosophy  becomes 
more  prominent  in  Hegel's  thought  and  correspondence 
as  time  goes  on.  To  Schelling  he  appeals  as  to  the 
elect  leader  of  the  newest  evolution  in  thought.  From 
the  Kantian  philosophy,  he  says,  a  great,  new  creative 
movement  is  to  grow,  and  the  central  idea  of  this  new 
movement  will  be  the  doctrine  of  the  absolute  and  infinite 
self,  whose  constructive  processes  shall  explain  the  funda- 
mental laws  of  the  world.  This  notion  Hegel  expresses 
already  in  1795,  when  he  is  but  twenty-five  and  Schelling 
is  but  twenty  years  old.  But  as  to  the  development  of 
the  new  system  in  his  own  mind  he  gives  little  or  no  hint 
until  1800,  just  before  joining  Schelling  at  Jena.  Then, 
as  he  confesses  to  his  friend,  "  the  ideal  of  my  youth  has 
had  to  take  a  reflective  form,  and  has  become  a  system  ; 
and  I  now  am  asking  how  I  can  return  to  life  and  set 
about  influencing  men."  He  had  actually,  by  this  time, 
written  an  outline  of  his  future  doctrine,  which  was  al- 
ready in  all  its  essentials  fully  defined.  On  his  first  ap- 
pearance at  Jena,  however,  he  was  content  to  appear  as  a 
co-worker  and  even  as  in  part  an  expositor  of  Schelling, 
and  probably  he  purposely  exaggerated  the  agreement 
between  his  friend  and  himself  so  long  as  he  found  Schel- 
ling's reputation  and  assistance  a  valuable  introduction  to 
the  learned  world,  in  which  the  youthful  romanticist  was 
already  a  great  figure,  while  Hegel  himself  was  so  far 
unknown.  In  1801,  Hegel  began  his  lectures  as  Privat- 
Docent  at  the  university.  In  1803,  Schelling  left  the 
university,  and  Hegel,  now  dependent  upon  himself,  ere- 
long made  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  he  had  his  own  rela- 
tively independent  philosophy,  and  that  he  could  find  as 
yet  nothing  definite  and  final  about  his  friend's  writings. 


202  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

His  own  first  great  book,  the  "  Phanomenologie  des 
Geistes,"  finished  at  about  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Jena, 
and  published  early  in  1807,  completed  his  separation 
from  Schelling,  whose  romantic  vagueness  he  unmerci- 
fully ridiculed,  without  naming  Schelling  himself,  in  the 
long  preface  with  which  the  book  opened.  In  a  letter  to 
Schelling  accompanying  a  copy  of  the  "  Phanomenologie," 
Hegel  indeed  explained  that  his  ridicule  must  be  under- 
stood as  directed  against  the  misuse  which  the  former's 
followers  were  making  of  the  romantic  method  in  philoso- 
phy ;  but  the  language  of  the  preface  was  unmistakable. 
Schelling  replied  curtly,  and  the  correspondence  ended. 
After  the  period  of  confusion  which  followed  the  battle  of 
Jena,  Hegel,  who  had  been  temporarily  forced  to  abandon 
the  scholastic  life,  found  a  place  as  gymnasium  director  at 
Niirnberg,  where  he  married  in  1811.  In  1816,  he  was 
called  to  a  professorship  of  philosophy  at  Heidelberg. 
He  had  already  published  his  "  Logic."  In  1818,  he  was 
called  to  Berlin,  and  here  rapidly  rose  to  the  highest 
academic  success.  He  had  a  great  following,  came  into 
especial  court  favor,  reached  an  almost  despotic  position 
in  the  world  of  German  philosophic  thought,  and  died  of 
cholera,  at  the  very  height  of  his  fame,  in  November, 
1831. 

If  we  now  undertake  in  a  few  words  to  characterize 
Hegel's  doctrine,  we  must  first  of  all  cut  loose  almost 
entirely  from  that  traditional  description  of  his  system 
which  has  been  repeated  in  the  text-books  until  almost 
everybody  has  forgotten  what  it  means,  and  has  therefore 
come  to  accept  it  as  true.  We  must  furthermore  limit 
our  attention  to  Hegel's  theory  of  the  nature  of  self-con- 
sciousness, laying  aside  all  detailed  study  of  the  rest  of 
his  elaborate  system.  And  finally  we  must  be  rude  to  our 
thinker,  as  he  was  to  every  one  else  ;  we  must  take  what 
we  regard  as  his  "  secret "  (to  borrow  Dr.  Stirling's 
word)  out  of  the  peculiar  language  in  which  Hegel  chose 


HEGEL.  203 

to  express  it,  and  out  of  the  systematic  tomb  where  he 
would  have  insisted  upon  burying  it.  So  treated,  Hegel's 
doctrine  will  appear  as  an  analysis  of  the  fundamental 
paradox  of  our  consciousness. 

In  terms  of  this  paradox  he  will  try  to  define,  first  the 
relation  of  the  finite  and  the  infinite  self,  then  the  relation 
between  mind  and  reality. 

in. 

The  world  of  our  daily  life,  Kant  had  said,  has  good 
order  and  connection  in  it,  not  because  the  absolute  order 
of  external  things  in  themselves  is  known  to  us,  but  (as 
I  have  reworded  Kant)  because  we  are  sane,  because  our 
understanding,  then,  has  its  own  coherence,  and  must  see 
its  experience  in  the  light  of  this  coherence.  Idealism 
has  already  drawn  the  obvious  conclusion  from  all  this. 
If  this  be  so,  if  it  is  our  understanding  that  actually 
creates  the  order  of  nature  for  us,  then  the  problem, 
"  How  shall  I  comprehend  my  world?"  becomes  no  more 
or  less  than  the  problem,  "  How  shall  I  understand  my- 
self ?"  We  have  already  suggested  into  what  romantic 
extravagances  the  effort  to  know  exhaustively  the  inner 
life  had  by  this  time  led.  Some  profound,  but  still  vague 
relation  was  felt  to  exist  between  my  own  self  and  an  in- 
finite self.  To  this  vague  relation,  which  Fichte  conceived 
in  purely  ethical  terms,  and  which  the  romanticists  tried 
to  grasp  in  numerous  arbitrary  and  fantastic  ways,  phi- 
losophy was  accustomed  to  appeal.  _My  real  self  is 
deeper  than  my  conscious  self,  and  this  real  self  is  bound- 
less, far  spreading,  romantic,  divine.  Only  poets  and 
other  geniuses  can  dream  of  it  justly.  But  nobody  can 
tell  squarely  and  simply,  mit  diirren  Worten,  just  what 
he  means  by  it.  Now  Hegel,  as  a  maliciously  cool-headed 
and  sternly  unromantic  Suabian,  did  indeed  himself  be- 
lieve in  the  infinite  self,  but  he  regarded  all  this  vague- 
ness of  the  romanticists  with  contempt,  and  even  with  a 


204  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

certain  rude  mirth.  He  appreciated  all  its  enthusiasm  in 
his  own  external  way,  of  course  ;  he  could  even  talk  after 
that  dreamy  fashion  himself,  and  once,  not  to  the  credit  of 
his  wisdom,  perhaps  not  quite  to  the  credit  of  his  honesty, 
he  did  so,  in  an  early  essay,  published,  as  we  must  note, 
while  he  was  still  Schelling's  academic  nursling  at  Jena. 
But  he  despised  vagueness,  and  when  the  time  came  he 
said  so.  Yet  still  for  him  the  great  question  of  philoso- 
phy lay  just  where  the  romanticists  had  found  it,  yes,  just 
where  Kant  himself  had  left  it.  My  conscious  and  pres- 
ent self  is  n't  the  whole  of  me.  I  am  constantly  appeal- 
ing to  my  own  past,  to  my  own  future  self,  and  to  my 
deeper  self,  also,  as  it  now  is.  Whatever  I  affirm,  or 
doubt,  or  deny,  I  am  always  searching  my  own  mind  for 
proof,  for  support,  for  guidance.  Such  searching  consti- 
tutes in  one  sense  all  my  active  mental  life.  All  philoso- 
phy then  turns,  as  Kant  had  shown,  upon  understanding 
who  and  what  I  am,  and  who  my  deeper  self  is.  Hegel 
recognizes  this ;  but  he  will  not  dream  about  it.  He 
undertakes  an  analysis,  therefore,  which  we  must  Here  re- 
word in  our  own  fashion,  and  for  the  most  part  with  our 
own  illustrations.1 

Examine  yourself  at  any  instant:  "I,"  you  say, 
"  know  just  now  this  that  is  now  present  to  me,  this  feel- 
ing, this  sound,  this  thought.  Of  past  and  future,  of  re- 
mote things,  of  other  people,  I  can  conjecture  this  or  that, 
>  ^but  just  now  and  here  I  know  whatever  is  here  and  now 
for  me."  Yes,  indeed,  but  what  is  here  and  now  for  me  ? 
See,  even  as  I  try  to  tell,  the  here  and  now  have  flown. 
I  know  this  note  of  music  that  sounds,  this  wave  that 
breaks  on  the  beach.  No,  not  so,  even  as  I  try  to  tell 
what  I  now  know,  the  note  has  sounded  and  ceased,  the 
wave  is  broken  and  another  wave  curves  onward  to  its  fall. 
I  cannot  say,  "I  know."  I  must  always  say,  "  I  just 

1  What  immediately  follows  is  of  course  suggested  by  the  opening 
of  the  argument  in  the  Pkanomenologie. 


HEGEL.  205 

knew."  But  what  was  it  I  just  knew  ?  Is  it  already  past 
and  gone  ?  Then  how  can  I  now  be  knowing  it  at  all  ? 
One  sees  this  endless  paradox  of  consciousness,  this  eter- 
nal  flight  of  myself  from  myself.  After  all,  do  I  really 
ever  know  any  one  abiding  or  even  momentarily  finished 
and  clearly  present  thing  ?  No,  indeed.  I  am  eternally 
changing  my  mind.  All  that  I  know,  then,  is  not  any 
present  moment,  but  the  moment  that  is  just  past,  and  the 
change  from  that  moment  to  this.  My  momentary  self, 
then,  has  knowledge  in  so  far  as  it  knows,  recognizes, 
accepts,  another  self,  the  self  of  the  moment  just  past. 
And  again,  my  momentary  self  is  known  to  the  self  of 
the  next  succeeding  moment,  and  so  on  in  eternal  and 
fatal  flight.  All  this  is  an  old  paradox.  The  poets 
make  a  great  deal  of  it.  You  can  illustrate  endlessly  its 
various  forms  and  shadings.  That  I  don't  know  my 
present  mind,  but  can  only  review  my  past  mind  is 
the  reason,  for  instance,  why  I  never  preeisely  know 
that  I  am  happy  at  the  very  instant  when  I  am  happy. 
After  a  merry  evening  I  can  think  it  all  over,  and  say, 
"  Yes,  I  have  been  happy.  It  all  was  good."  Only  then, 
mark  you,  the  happiness  is  over.  But  still,  you  may  say, 
I  know  that  the  memory  of  my  past  happiness  is  itself  a 
happy  thing.  No,  not  even  this  do  I  now  directly  know. 
If  I  reflect  on  my  memory  of  past  joy,  I  see  once  more, 
but  in  a  second  reflective  memory,  that  my  previous  mem- 
ory of  joy  was  itself  joyous.  But,  as  you  see,  I  get  each 
new  joy  as  my  own  in  knowledge  only  when  it  has  fled  in 
being.  It  is  my  memory,  that  but  a  moment  since  or  a 
while  since  I  was  joyful,  that  constitutes  my  knowledge 
of  my  joy.  This  is  a  somewhat  sad  paradox.  I  fed  my 
best  joys  just  when  I  know  them  least,  namely,  in  my 
least  reflective  moments.  To  know  that  I  enjoy  is  to  re- 
flect, and  to  reflect  is  to  remember  a  joy  past.  But 
surely,  then,  one  may  say,  when  I  suffer  I  can  know  that 
I  am  miserable.  Yes,  but  once  more  only  reflectively. 


206  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Each  pang  is  past  when  I  come  to  know  that  it  was  just 
now  mine.  "  That  is  over,"  I  say,  "jHdba£_next?  "  And  it 
is  this  horror  of  the  "  what  next  ?  "  this  looking  for  my  sor- 
row elsewhere  than  in  the  present,  namely,  in  the  dreaded 
and  on-coming  fatal  future,  that  constitutes  the  deepest 
pang  of  loneliness,  of  defeat,  of  shame,  or  of  bereave- 
ment. My  illustrations  are  still  my  own,  not  Hegel's.1 

The  result  of  all  this  possibly  too  elaborate  web-spin- 
ning of  ours  is  not  far  to  seek.  We  wanted  to  know  who 
any  one  of  us  at  any  moment  is ;  and  the  answer  to  the 
question  is :  Each  one  of  us  is  what  some  other  moment 
of  his  life  reflectively  finds  him  to  be.  It  is  a  mysterious 
and  puzzling  fact,  but  it  is  true.  No  one  of  us  knows 
what  he  now  is  ;  lie  can  only  know  what  he  was.  Each 
one  of  us,  however,  is  now  only  what  hereafter  he  shall 
find  himself  to  be.  This  is  the  deepest  paradox  of  the 
inner  life.  We  get  self-possession,  self-apprehension, 
self-knowledge,  only  through  endlessly  fleeing  from  our- 
selves, and  then  turning  back  to  look  at  what  we  were.2 
But  this  paradox  relates  not  merely  to  moments.  It  re- 
lates to  all  life.  Youth  does  not  know  its  own  deep  mind. 
Mature  life  or  old  age  reflectively  discovers  a  part  of 
what  youth  meant,  and  sorrows  now  that  the  meaning  is 
known  only  when  the  game  is  ended.  All  feeling,  all 
character,  all  thought,  all  life,  exists  for  us  only  in  so  far 
as  it  can  be  reflected  upon,  viewed  from  without,  seen  at 

1  Hegel's  illustrations  are  more  commonly  from  more  highly  re- 
flective stages  of  consciousness.     Yet  the  key  to  the  "  movement  " 
of  the  whole  "  Logic  "  lies  in  just  this  fashion  of  viewing  the  facts 
of  life  and  thought. 

2  Cf.  Logik,  vol.  i.  (Werke,  vol.  iii.),  pp.  99,  114,  152,  283,  and  285, 
for  a  series  of  expressions,  in  highly  abstract  form,  of  the  nature  of 
this  process  as  manifested  in  case  of  various  logical  constructions  and 
categories.     The  commonest  technical  name  for  the  process  is  Nega* 
tion  der  Negation  (1.  c.  p.  99),  explained  further  on  page  114.    On  page 
152  the  verb  zuruckkehren  is  employed  to  name  the  same  act ;  so 
p.  288. 


HEGEL.  207 

a  distance,  acknowledged  by  another  than  itself,  reworded 
in  terms  of  fresh  experience.  Stand  still  where  you  are, 
stand  alone,  isolate  your  life,  and  forthwith  you  are  no- 
thing. Enter  into  relations,  exist  for  the  reflective  thought 
of  yourself,  or  of  other  people,  criticise  yourself  and  be 
criticised,  observe  yourself  and  be  observed,  exist,  and  at 
the  same  time  look  upon  yourself  and  be  looked  upon  from 
without,  and  then  indeed  you  are  somebody,  —  a  self  with 
a  consistency  and  a  vitality,  a  being  with  a  genuine  life.1 

In  short,  then,  take  me  moment  by  moment,  or  take 
me  in  the  whole  of  my  life,  and  this  comes  out  as  the 
paradox  of  my  existence,  namely,  I  know  myself  only  in 
so  far  as  I  am  known  or  may  be  known  by  another  than 
my  present  or  momentary  self.  Leave  me  alone  to  the 
self-consciousness  of  this  moment,  and  I  shrivel  up  into  a 
mere  atom,  an  unknowable  feeling,  a  nothing.  My  exis- 
tence  is  in  a  sort  of  conscious  publicity  of  my  inner  life.2 

Let  me  draw  at  once  an  analogy  between  this  fact  of 
the  inner  life  and  the  well-known  fact  of  social  life! to 
which  I  just  made  reference.  This  analogy  evidently 
struck  Hegel  with  a  great  deal  of  force,  as  he  often  refers 
to  it.  We  are  all  aware,  if  we  have  ever  tried  it,  how 
empty  and  ghostly  is  a  life  lived  for  a  long  while  in  abso- 
lute solitude.  Free  me  from  my  fellows,  let  me  alone  to 
work  out  the  salvation  of  my  own  glorious  self,  and  surely 
(so  I  may  fancy)  I  shall  now  for  the  first  time  show  who 
I  am.  No,  not  so ;  on  the  contrary  I  merely  show  in  such 
a  case  who  I  am  not.  I  am  no  longer  friend,  brother, 
companion,  co-worker,  servant,  citizen,  father,  son ;  I  ex- 
ist for  nobody ;  and  erelong,  perhaps  to  my  surprise, 
generally  to  my  horror,  I  discover  that  I  am  nobody. 
The  one  thing  means  the  other.  In  the  dungeon  of  my 

1  The  Kampf  des  Anerkennens  of  the  Ph&nomenologie. 

2  Brief  general  descriptions  of  the  process  and  paradox  of  self- 
oonsciousness  as  such  are  :  Phanomenologie,  p.  125  ;  Logik,  Werke,  voL 
ill.  p.  66,  and  vol.  v.  p.  13  ;  Encyklopadie,  Werket  vol.  vi.  pp.  47,  91. 


208  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

isolated  self -consciousness  I  rot  away  unheeded  and  terror- 
stricken.  Idiocy  is  before  me,  and  my  true  self  is  far  be- 
hind, in  those  bright  and  bitter  days  when  I  worked  and 
suffered  with  my  fellows.  My  freedom  from  others  is  my 
doom,  the  most  insufferable  form  of  bondage.  Could  I 
speak  to  a  living  soul !  If  any  one  knew  of  me,  looked 
at  me,  thought  of  me,  yes,  hated  me  even,  how  blessed 
would  be  the  deliverance  !  Now  note  the  analogy  here 
between  the  inner  life  in  each  of  us  and  the  social  life 
that  each  of  us  leads.  Within  myself  the  rule  holds  that 
I  live  consciously  only  in  so  far  as  I  am  known  and  re- 
flected upon  by  my  subsequent  life.  Beyond  what  is 
called  my  private  self,  however,  a  similar  rule  holds.  I 
exist  in  a  vital  and  humane  sense  only  in  relation  to  my 
friends,  my  social  business,  my  family,  my  fellow-workers, 
my  world  of  other  selves.  This  is  the  rule  of  mental  life. 
We  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  consciousness  as  if  it  were 
wholly  an  inner  affair,  which  each  one  has  at  each  mo- 
ment solely  in  and  by  himself.  But,  after  all,  what  con- 
sciousness do  we  then  refer  to  ?  What  is  love  but  the 
consciousness  that  somebody  is  there  who  either  loves  me 
(and  then  I  rejoice)  or  does  not  (and  then  I  am  gloomy 
or  jealous)  ?  What  is  self-respect  but  a  conscious  appeal 
to  others  to  respect  my  right  or  my  worth  ?  And  if  you 
talk  of  one's  secret  heart,  what  is  it  but  just  that  inner 
brooding  in  one's  own  conscious  life  which  so  much  the 
more  illustrates,  as  we  say,  the  very  impossibility  of  know- 
ing myself  except  by  looking  back  on  my  past  self.  See, 
then,  it  makes  no  difference  how  you  look  at  me,  you  find 
the  same  thing.  All  consciousness  is  an  appeal  to  other 
conscioiisness.1  That  is  the  essence  of  it.  The  inner  life 
is,  as  Hegel  would  love  to  express  it,  ebensosehr  an  outer 
life.  Spirituality  is  just  intercourse,  communion  of  spir- 
its. This  is  the  essential  publicity  of  consciousness, 
whereby  all  the  secrets  of  our  hearts  are  known.2 

1  Phanomenologie,  p.  135. 

8  The  word  "publicity  "  is  a  very  fair  representative  of  Allgemeiiv* 


HEGEL.  209 

Here,  then,  Hegel  has  come  upon  the  track  of  a  pro- 
cess in  consciousness  whereby  my  private  self  and  that 
deeper  self  of  the  romanticists  may  be  somewhat  more 
definitely  connected.  Let  us  state  this  process  a  little 
abstractedly.  A  conscious  being  is  to  think,  or  to  feel,  or 
to  do  something.  Very  well,  then,  he  must  surely  think 
or  do~tEfs,  one  would  say,  in  some  one  moment.  So  be  it; 
but  as  a  conscious  being  he  is  also  to  know  that  he  thinks 
or  does  this.  To  this  end,  however,  he  must  exist  in 
more  than  one  moment.  He  must  first  act,  and  then  live 
to  know  that  he  has  acted.  The  self  that  acts  is  one,  the 
self  that  knows  of  the  act  is  another.  Here,  then,  there 
are  at  least  two  moments,  already  two  selves.  We  see  at 
once  how  the  same  process  could  be  indefinitely  repeated. 
In  order  to  know  myself  at  all,  I  must  thus  live  out  an  in- 
definitely numerous  series  of  acts  and  moments.  ^1  must 
become  many  selves  and  live  in  their  union  and  coherence. 
But  still  more.  Suppose  that  what  our  self-conscious  be- 
ing has  to  do  is  to  prove  a  proposition  in  geometry.  As 
he  proves,  he  appeals  to  somebody,  his  other  self,  so  to 
speak,  to  observe  that  his  proof  is  sound.  Or  again,  sup- 
pose that  what  he  does  is  to  love,  to  hate,  to  beseech,  to 
pity,  to  appeal  for  pity,  to  feel  proud,  to  despise,  to  exhort, 
to  feel  charitable,  to  long  for  sympathy,  to  converse,  to  do, 
in  short,  any  of  the  social  acts  that  ludke  up,  when  taken 
all  together,  the  whole  of  our  innermost  self-conscious- 
ness. All  these  acts,  we  see,  involve  at  least  the  appeal 
to  many  selves,  to  society,  to  other  spirits.  We  have  no 
life  alone.  There  is  no  merely  inner  self.  There  is  the 
world  of  selves.  We  live  in  our  coherence  with  other 
people,  in  our  relationships.  To  sum  it  all  up :  From 
first  to  last  the  law  of  conscious  existence  is  this  paradox^ 

heit  as  applied  to  self -consciousness  by  Hegel  in  the  highly  important 
§  436  of  the  Encyklopadie,  Werke,  vol.  vii.  2,  p.  283.  Here  already 
appears  the  nature  of  the  true  Universal  of  Hegel's  system.  Organic 
interrelationship  of  individuals  is  the  condition  even  of  their  relatively 
independent  selfhood. 


210  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

ical  but  real  self-differentiation,  whereby  I,  the  so-called 
inner  self,  am  through  and  through  one  of  many  selves, 
so  that  my  inner  self  is  already  an  outer,  a  revealed,  an 
expressed  self.  The  only  mind  then  is  the  world  of  many 
related  minds.  It  is  of  the  essence  of  consciousness  to 
find  its  inner  reality  by  losing  itself  in  outer,  but  spiritual 
relationships.  Who  am  I  then  at  this  moment?  I  am 
just  this  knot  of  relationships  to  other  moments  and  to 
other  people.  Do  I  converse  busily  and  with  absorption  ? 
Then  I  am  but  just  now  this  centre  of  the  total  conscious- 
ness of  all  those  who  are  absorbed  in  this  conversation. 
And  so  always  it  is  of  the  essence  of  spirit  to  differen- 
tiate itself  into  many  spirits,  and  to  live  in  their  relation- 
ships, to  be  one  by  virtue  solely  of  their  coherence. 

The  foregoing  illustrations  of  Hegel's  paradox,  some  of 
which  in  these  latter  paragraphs  have  been  his  own,  have 
not  begun  to  suggest  how  manifold  are,  according  to  him, 
its  manifestations.  So  paradoxical  and  so  true  does  it 
seem  to  him,  however,  that  he  looks  for  further  analogies 
of  the  same  process  in  other  regions  of  our  conscious  life. 
What  we  have  found  is  that  if  I  am  to  be  I,  "as  I  think 
I  be,"  I  must  be  more  than  merely  I.  I  become  myself 
by  forsaking  my  isolation  and  by  entering  into  commu- 
nity. My  self-possession  is  always  and  everywhere  self- 
surrender  to  my  relationships.  But  now  is  not  this  para- 
dox of  the  spirit  applicable  still  further  in  life  ?  Does  n't 
a  similar  law  hold  of  all  that  we  do  in  yet  a  deeper  sense? 
If  you  want  to  win  any  end,  not  merely  the  end  of  know- 
ing yourself,  but  say  the  end  of  becoming  holy,  is  n't  it 
true  that,  curiously  enough,  you  in  vain  strive  to  become 
holy  if  you  merely  strive  for  holiness  ?  Just  pure  holi- 
ness, what  would  it  be  ?  To  have  never  a  worldly  thought, 
to  be  peaceful,  calm,  untroubled,  absolutely  pure  in  spirit, 
without  one  blot  or  blemish,  —  that  would  indeed  be  noble, 
would  it  ?  But  consider,  if  one  were  thus  quite  unworldly 
just  because  one  had  never  an  unworldly  thought,  what 


HEGEL.  211 

xrould  that  be  but  simple  impassivity,  innocence,  pure 
emptiness?  An  innocent  little  cherub,  that,  just  born 
into  a  pure  light,  had  never  even  heard  that  there  was  a 
world  at  all,  he  would  indeed  in  this  sense  be  unworldly. 
But  is  such  holiness  the  triumphant  holiness  of  those  that 
really  excel  in  strength  ?  Of  course  if  I  had  never  even 
heard  of  the  world,  I  should  not  be  a  lover  of  the  world. 
But  that  would  be  because  of  my  ignorance.  And  all 
sorts  of  things  can  be  alike  ignorant,  —  cherubs,  young 
tigers,  infant  Napoleons,  or  Judases.  Yes,  the  very 
demons  of  the  pit  might  have  begun  by  being  ignorant  of 
the  universe.  If  so,  they  would  have  been  so  far  holy. 
But,  after  all,  is  such  holiness  worth  much  as  holiness  ?  It 
is  indeed  worth  a  good  deal  as  innocence,  just  to  be 
looked  at.  A  young  tiger  or  a  baby  Napoleon  fast  asleep, 
or  a  new  created  demon  that  had  not  yet  grown  beyond 
the  cherub  stage  —  we  should  all  like  to  look  at  such 
pretty  creatures.  But  such  holiness  is  no  ideal  for  us 
moral  agents.  Here  we  are  with  the  world  in  our  hands, 
beset  already  with  temptation  and  with  all  the  pangs  of 
our  finitude.  For  us  holiness  means,  not  the  abolition 
of  worldliness,  not  innocence,  not  turning  away  from  the 
world,  but  the  victory  that  overcometh  the  world,  the 
struggle,  the  courage,  the  vigor,  the  endurance,  the  hot 
fight  with  sin,  the  facing  of  the  demon,  the  power  to  have, 
him  there  in  us  and  to  hold  him  by  the  throat,  the  living 
and  ghastly  presence  of  the  enemy,  and  the  triumphant 
wrestling  with  him  and  keeping  him  forever  a  panting, 
furious,  immortal  thrall  and  bondman.  That  is  all  the 
holiness  we  can  hope  for.  Yes,  this  is  the  only  true  holi- 
ness. Such  triumph  alone  does  the  supreme  spirit  know, 
who  is  tempted  in  all  points  like  as  we  are,  yet  without 
sin.  Holiness,  you  see,  exists  by  virtue  of  its  opposite. 
Holiness  is  a  consciousness  of  sin  with  a  consciousness  of 
the  victory  over  sin.  Only  the  tempted  are  holy,  and 
they  only  when  they  win  against  temptation. 


212  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

All  this  I  set  down  here,  not  merely  because  I  believe 
it,  although  indeed  I  do,  but  because  Hegel's  cool  diag- 
nosis of  life  loves  to  mark  just  such  symptoms  as  this. 
"Die  Tugend,"  says  he  in  one  passage  of  his  "Logic," 
"  die  Tugend  ist  der  hochste,  vollendete  Kampf ." J  Holi- 
ness, then,  is  the  very  height  of  the  struggle  with  evil. 
It  is  a  paradox,  all  this.  And  it  is  the  same  paradox  of 
consciousness  over  again.  You  want  the  consciousness  of 
virtue ;  you  win  it,  not  by  innocence,  but  through  its  own 
very  opposite,  namely,  through  meeting  the  enemy,  endur- 
ing and  overcoming.  Consciousness  here  once  more,  as 
before,  differentiates  itself  into  various,  into  contrasted, 
forms  and  lives  in  their  relationships,  their  conflicts,  their 
contradictions,  and  in  the  triumph  over  these.  As  the 
warrior  rejoices  in  the  foeman  worthy  of  his  steel,  and 
rejoices  in  him  just  because  he  wants  to  overcome  and  to 
slay  him ;  as  courage  exists  by  the  triumph  over  terror, 
and  as  there  is  no  courage  in  a  world  where  there  is 
nothing  terrible;  as  strength  consists  in  the  mastery  of 
obstacles ;  as  even  love  is  proved  only  through  suffering, 
grows  deep  only  when  sorrow  was  with  it,  becomes  often 
the  tenderer  because  it  is  wounded  by  misunderstanding ; 
so,  in  short,  everywhere  in  conscious  life,  consciousness 
is  a  union,  an  organization,  of  conflicting  aims,  purposes, 
thoughts,  stirrings.  And  just  this,  according  to  Hegel,  is 
the  very  perfection  of  consciousness.  There  is  nothing 
simple  in  it,  nothing  unmittelbar,  nothing  there  till  you 
win  it,  nothing  consciously  known  or  possessed  till  you 
prove  it  by  conflict  with  its  opposite,  till  you  develop  its 
inner  contradictions  and  triumph  over  them.  This  is  the 
fatal  law  of  life.  This  is  the  pulse  of  the  spiritual  world. 

For  see,  once  more :  our  illustrations  have  run  from 
highest  to  lowest  in  life.  Everywhere,  from,  the  most 

1  Werke,  vol.  iv.,  p.  63.  The  spirit  of  the  foregoing  exposition  of 
the  essence  of  holiness  is  found  expressed  in  many  places,  especially 
in  the  Religionsphilosophie. 


HEGEL.  213 

trivial  games,  where  the  players  are  always  risking  loss 
in  order  to  enjoy  triumph,  from  the  lowest  crudities  of 
savage  existence,  where  the  warriors  prove  their  heroism 
by  lacerating  their  own  flesh,  up  to  the  highest  conflicts 
and  triumphs  of  the  spirit,  the  law  holds  good.  Spiritu- 
ality lives  by  self-differentiation  into  mutually  opposing 
forces,  and  by  victory  in  and  over  these  oppositions. 
This  law  it  is  that  Hegel  singles  out  and  makes  the  basis 
of  his  system.  This  is  the  logic  of  passion  which  he  so 
skillfully  diagnoses,  and  so  untiringly  and  even  mercilessly 
applies  to  all  life.  He  gives  his  law  various  very  techni- 
cal names.  He  calls  it  the  law  of  the  universal  Negati- 
vitdt  of  self-conscious  life  ;  and  Negativitat  means  simply 
this  principle  of  self-differentiation,  by  which,  in  order 
to  possess  any  form  of  life,  virtue,  or  courage,  or  wisdom, 
or  self-consciousness,  you  play,  as  it  were,  the  game  of 
consciousness,  set  over  against  yourself  your  opponent, — 
the  wicked  impulse  that  your  goodness  holds  by  the 
throat,  the  cowardice  that  your  courage  conquers,  the 
problem  that  your  wisdom  solves,  —  and  then  live  by 
winning  your  game  against  this  opponent.  Having  found 
this  law,  Hegel  undertakes,  by  a  sort  of  exhaustive  induc- 
tion, to  apply  it  to  the  explanation  of  every  conscious  rela- 
tion, and  to  construct,  in  terms  of  this  principle  of  the 
self -differentiation  of  spirit,  the  whole  mass  of  our  rational 
relations  to  one  another,  to  the  world,  and  to  God.  His 
principle  is,  in  another  form,  this :  that  the  deeper  self 
which  the  romanticists  sought  is  to  be  found  and  defined 
only  by  spiritual  struggle,  toil,  conflict ;  by  setting  over 
against  our  private  selves  the  world  of  our  tasks,  of  our 
relationships,  and  by  developing,  defining,  and  mastering 
these  tasks  and  relationships  until  we  shall  find,  through 
the  very  stress  and  vastness  and  necessity  and  spirituality 
of  the  conflict,  that  we  are  in  God's  own  infinite  world  of 
spiritual  warfare  and  of  absolute  restless  self-conscious- 
ness. The  more  of  a  self  I  am,  the  more  contradictions 


214  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

there  are  in  my  nature  and  the  completer  my  conquest 
over  these  contradictions.  The  absolute  self  with  which  I 
am  seeking  to  raise  my  soul,  and  which  erelong  I  find  to  be 
a  genuine  self,  yes,  the  only  self,  exists  by  the  very  might 
of  its  control  over  all  these  contradictions,  whose  infinite 
variety  furnishes  the  very  heart  and  content  of  its  life. 

Hegel,  as  we  see,  makes  his  Absolute,  the  Lord,  most 
decidedly  a  man  of  war.  Consciousness  is  paradoxical, 
restless,  struggling.  Weak  souls  get  weary  of  the  fight, 
and  give  up  trying  to  get  wisdom,  skill,  virtue,  because  all 
these  are  won  only  in  presence  of  the  enemy.  But  the  ab- 
solute self  is  simply  the  absolutely  strong  spirit  who  bears 
the  contradictions  of  life,  and  wins  the  eternal  victory. 

Yet  one  may  say,  if  this  is  Hegel's  principle,  it  amounts 
simply  to  showing  us  how  conflict  and  active  mastery  con- 
tinually enlarge  our  finite  selves.  Does  it  enable  us  to 
prove  that  anywhere  in  the  world  there  is  this  absolute  self 
which  embraces  and  wins  all  the  conflicts?  Hegel  tells 
us  how  the  individual  self  is  related  to  the  deeper  self, 
how  the  inner  life  finds  itself  through  its  own  realization 
in  the  contradictions  of  the  outer  life.  But  does  he  any- 
where show  that  God  exists  ? 

To  show  this  is  precisely  his  object.  I  am  not  here 
judging  how  well  he  succeeds.  The  deepest  presupposi- 
tion, he  thinks,  of  all  this  paradoxical  conscious  life  of 
ours  is  the  existence  of  the  absolute  self,  which  exists,  to 
be  sure,  not  apart  from  the  world,  but  in  this  whole  organ- 
ized human  warfare  of  ours.  Only  Hegel  is  not  at  all 
content  to  state  this  presupposition  mystically.  He  de- 
sires to  usejris  secret, — his  formula  for  the  very  essence 
of  consciousness,  his  fundamental  law  of  rationality,  to 
unlock  problem  after  problem  until  he  reaches  the  idea  of 
the  absolute  self.  Of  the  systematic  fashion  in  which  he 
attacked  this  task  in  his  "  Logic,"  in  his  "  Encyclopaedia," 
and  in  his  various  courses  of  lectures,  I  can  give  no  very 
satisfying  notion.  To  my  mind,  however,  he  did  his  work 


HEGEL.  215 

best  of  all  in  his  deepest  and  most  difficult  book,  the  "  Phe- 
nomenology of  Spirit."  Here  he  seeks  to  show  how,  in 
case  you  start  just  with  yourself  alone,  and  ask  who  yon 
are  and  what  you  know,  you  are  led  on,  step  by  step, 
through  a  process  of  active  self-enlargement  that  cannot 
stop  short  of  the  recognition  of  the  Absolute  Spirit  himself 
as  the  very  heart  and  soul  of  your  own  life.  This  process 
consists  everywhere  in  a  repetition  of  the  fundamental 
paradox  of  consciousness :  In  order  to  realize  what  I  am  I 
must,  as  I  find,  become  more  than  I  am  or  than  I  know 
myself  to  be.  I  must  enlarge  myself,  conceive  myself  as 
in  external  relationships,  go  beyond  my  private  self,  pre- 
suppose the  social  life,  enter  into  conflict,  and,  winning 
the  conflict,  come  nearer  to  realizing  my  unity  with  my 
deeper  self.  But  the  real  understanding  of  this  process 
only  comes,  according  to  Hegel,  when  you  observe  that 
in  trying  thus  to  enlarge  yourself  for  the  very  purpose 
of  self-comprehension  you  repeat  ideally  the  evolution  of 
human  civilization  in  your  own  person.  This  process  of 
self-enlargement  is  the  process  which  is  writ  large  in  the 
history  of  mankind.  The  "  Phenomenology  "  is  thus  a  sort 
of  freely  told  philosophy  of  history.  It  begins  with  the 
Spirit  on  a  crude  and  sensual  stage ;  it  follows  his  para 
doxes,  his  social  enlargement,  his  perplexities,  his  rebel- 
lions, his  skepticism,  all  his  wanderings,  until  he  learns, 
through  toils  and  anguish  and  courage,  such  as  represent 
the  whole  travail  of  humanity,  that  he  is,  after  all,  in  his 
very  essence  the  absolute  and  divine  spirit  himself,  who  is 
present  already  on  the  savage  stage  in  the  very  brutalities 
of  master  and  slave ;  who  comes  to  a  higher  life  in  the 
family ;  who  seeks  freedom  again  and  again  in  romantic 
sentimentality  or  in  stoical  independence ;  who  learns, 
however,  always  afresh  that  in  such  freedom  there  is  no 
truth ;  who  returns,  therefore,  willingly  to  the  bondage  of 
good  citizenship  and  of  social  morality ;  and  who,  finally, 
in  the  religious  consciousness,  comes  to  an  appreciation  of 


216  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

the  lesson  that  he  has  learned  through  this  whole  self- 
enlarging  process  of  civilization,  —  the  lesson,  namely, 
that  all  consciousness  is  a  manifestation  of  the  one  law  of 
spiritual  life,  and  so,  finally,  of  the  one  Eternal  Spirit. 
The  Absolute  of  Hegel's  "  Phenomenology  "  is  no  absolute 
on  parade,  so  to  speak,  —  no  God  that  hides  himself  be- 
hind clouds  and  darkness,  nor  yet  a  Supreme  Being  who 
keeps  himself  carefully  clean  and  untroubled  in  the  re- 
cesses of  an  inaccessible  infinity.  No,  Hegel's  Absolute 
is,  I  repeat,  a  man  of  war.  The  dust  and  the  blood  of 
ages  of  humanity's  spiritual  life  are  upon  him  ;  he  comes 
before  us  pierced  and  wounded,  but  triumphant,  —  the 
God  who  has  conquered  contradictions,  and  who  is  simply 
the  total  spiritual  consciousness  that  expresses,  embraces, 
unifies,  and  enjoys  the  whole  wealth  of  our  human  loyalty, 
endurance,  and  passion. 

IV. 

But  still  you  may  ask,  Does  all  this  yet  give  us  the  con- 
ditions of  a  genuine  philosophical  system  ?  Does  it  ex- 
plain outer  nature  and  physical  causation  ?  does  it  explain 
perception  and  knowledge  ?  does  it  tell  us  the  true  nature 
of  things  ?  In  brief,  as  you  see,  all  this  doctrine  of  He- 
gel's seems  essentially  ethical,  practical,  an  exposition  of 
spirituality,  —  ndt  a  theoretical  account  of  nature.  Well, 
Hegel  believes  himself  to  be  in  possession  of  devices 
whereby  he  can  make  his  essentially  practical  categories 
of  a  deep  theoretical  significance.  Consider,  namely, 
those  problems  of  the  external  world,  of  space  and  time, 
of  cause  and  effect,  of  law  and  phenomena,  of  substance 
and  show,  of  nature  and  of  man,  which  previous  philoso- 
phy has  been  treating.  How  do  these  problems  arise, 
and  what  is  their  universal  character  ?  Are  n't  they 
always  problems  about  some  paradoxical  opposition  that 
seems  to  exist  in  the  nature  of  reality,  and  that  baffles 
the  human  understanding  just  because  both  the  opposed 


HEGEL.  217 

terms,  —  say,  for  instance,  knowing  subject  and  known 
object ;  or  true  reality  and  seeming  reality ;  or  things  in 
themselves  and  phenomena  ;  pr  finite  and  infinite,  —  just 
because,  I  say,  both  these  opposed  terms  in  each  pair 
seem  to  be  separate,  sundered,  mutually  irreducible,  in- 
accessible each  to  other,  while  yet  both  the  opposed  things 
nevertheless  continually  force  themselves  upon  us,  and 
demand  of  us  an  explanation.  Philosophy  is  a  nest  of 
such  problems.  They  vex  men  endlessly  ;  they  gave 
Kant  his  troublesome  pairs  of  contradictory  assertions 
about  space  and  time ;  they  gave  Fichte  the  puzzle  about 
self  and  not-self ;  they  gave  Hume  the  problem  about 
facts  and  laws,  about  experience  that  could  never  find 
necessity,  and  necessity  that  continually  pretended  to 
inflict  itself  upon  experience.  A  logical  system  of  such 
problems  and  of  their  solutions  would  be  a  complete 
theoretical  philosophy,  an  account  of  the  absolute,  such  as 
Schelling  had  dreamed  of.  Well,  in  our  formula  of  the 
universal  Negativitat  of  the  spiritual  life,  have  n't  we 
found  precisely  the  formula  that  would  both  state  and 
solves  such  puzzles  as  these?  Spirit  it  is  that  makes 
the  world.  That,  you  remember,  is,  since  Kant,  presup- 
position of  this  whole  age.  The  spirit,  then,  because  of 
its  JVegativitat,  will  everywhere  differentiate  itself,  and 
therefore,  throughout  all  its  universe,  from  the  atoms  to 
the  archangels,  will  create  seeming  oppositions,  will  bur- 
den itself  with  a  wealth  of  magnificent  paradoxes ;  and 
will  do  this  equally  and  obstinately  in  the  world  of  theory, 
as  well  as  in  the  world  of  practice.  If,  therefore,  we 
have  the  key  to  the  process  whereby  the  spirit  wins  unity 
in  the  midst  of  its  own  oppositions,  then  the  puzzle  of 
Hume  and  the  problems  of  Kant,  the  conflicts  of  empiri- 
cal research  and  of  a  priori  speculation,  —  yes,  all  the 
puzzles  that  the  history  of  philosophy  shows  us,  can  be 
istated  and  solved ;  for  they  will  all  be  cases  of  the  same 
fundamental  paradox  of  self-consciousness.  The  talisman 


218  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

of  the  logic  of  passion  will  cause  to  open  the  doors  of  the 
richest  treasure-houses  of  theoretical  research.  It  is  with 
this  notion  in  mind  that  Hegel,  influenced  by  Schelling's 
example,  even  as  Schelling  had  been  by  his  own,  sets  out 
to  expound,  not  merely  the  history  of  the  human  or  even 
of  the  absolute  spirit,  but  the  nature  and  the  solution  of 
every  philosophical  problem  concerning  the  absolute  as 
the  history  of  philosophy  has  presented  such  problems 
to  us,  whether  in  the  fundamental  questions  of  logic,  or 
in  the  inquiries  of  the  philosophy  of  nature.  1  need  not 
say  that  this  stupendous  undertaking  was  but  indifferently 
executed. 

It  is  just  this  undertaking,  however,  that  gives  the  He- 
gelian system  its  peculiarly  technical  and  abstruse  for- 
mulation. 

The  system  itself  is  set  forth  in  three  divisions :  the 
"  Logic,"  the  "  Philosophy  of  Nature,"  and  the  "  Philoso- 
phy of  Spirit."  The  "  logic  "  is  an  exposition,  in  the  most 
orderly  and  technical  form,  of  the  fundamental  thoughts, 
or  "categories,"  which  are  to  be  found  exemplified  in 
all  the  facts  of  this  our  world  of  the  self.  As  for  these 
categories  themselves,  the  history  of  philosophy  furnishes 
them  to  Hegel.  They  are  such  fundamental  ideas  as 
those  of  Being  and  Something ;  of  Many  and  One ;  of 
Quality,  and  Quantity,  and  Relation  ;  of  Essence  and 
Phenomenon  ;  of  Form  and  Matter ;  of  Inner  and  Outer ; 
of  Law  and  Substance ;  of  Subject  and  Object ;  of 
Thought  and  the  Absolute.  You  can't  get  on  in  phi- 
losophy without  using  such  conceptions.  They  are  the 
coinage  of  the  spiritual  realm.  If  you  try  to  set  forth 
truth  you  must  employ  them ;  if  you  want  to  understand 
truth,  you  must  comprehend  them/  And  now  compre- 
hension of  these  categories  isn't  to  be  got  by  merely  de- 
fining them  in  abstract  fashion,  as  Euclid  defines  a  circle, 
or  Spinoza  his  substance.  Definition,  simple,  positive, 
hard  and  fast  as  it  is,  never  tells  the  whole  truth  about 


HEGEL.  219 

a  conception  ;  for  every  fundamental  conception  is  really 
fcTbe  comprehended  only  by  viewing  it  in  the  true  and  yet 
paradoxical  relation  to  its  own  opposite,  that,  as  a  product 
of  self-consciousness,  this  conception  must  hajte,..  We  have 
already  seen  how  virtue  and  vice,  present  consciousness 
and  past  consciousness,  individual  consciousness  and  social 
consciousness,  inner  life  and  outer  life,  are  indefinable,  in- 
comprehensible, save  by  virtue  of  an  insight  into  just 
that  wondrous  union  of  conflicting  tendencies  whereby 
each  of  the  opposed  conceptions  gets  its  meaning  for  us. 
It  is  the  flow,  the  change,  the  conflict  of  thought  that  the 
philosopher  has  to  follow.  In  vain,  for  instance,  do  you 
try  to  define  substance  after  Spinoza's  fashion  as  a  merely 
eternal,  fixed,  congealed,  and  immobile  truth.  The  sub- 
stance of  this  world,  of  this  universe  of  the  self,  must 
be  a  truth  that  lives  in  the  very  stream  and  struggle  of 
finite  and  seeming  existence.  The  true  substance  of  the 
world  is  n't  hidden,  but  revealed  by  the  passionate  change 
and  ebb  and  flow  of  the  phenomena ;  for  the  true  sub- 
stance is  the  self,  the  subject ;  and  he  preserves  himself 
by  living,  for  he  is  the  living  God.  As  such,  philosophy 
has  to  show  him.  Therefore  you  can't  abstractly  define 
his  nature,  apart  from  finite  things  and  relations.  You 
must  concretely  realize,  even  in  your  notion  of  substance, 
the  organic  unity  in  endless  differentiation  of  which  his 
universe  is  the  embodiment.  Even  so  it  is  with  other 
categories.  You  comprehend  them  by  virtue  of  their 
paradoxes.  The  "jLogic  "  undertakes  to  be  an  exhaustive 
analysis  of  such  paradoxes  of  the  fundamental  concep- 
tions; 

""The  method  of  the  "  Logic,"  then,  is  what  Hegel  calls 
the  dialectical  method.  It  is  the  method  of  what  we  have 
called  the  logic  of  passion,  applied  to  the  most  theoreti- 
cal and  seemingly  least  passionate  of  human  conceptions. 
Take  any  notion  you  please.  Hegel  at  once  sees  in  that 
notion  the  traces  of  the  self-conscious  strife  whereof  it  is 


220  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

the  offspring,  or,  if  you  like,  the  crystallized  embodiment. 
Is  it  quantity  that  you  are  talking  about  ?  Then  you  at 
once  observe  that  there  are  two  ways  of  looking  at  quan- 
tity. One,  to  which  we  get  used  in  elementary  arithmetic, 
regards  quantity  as  what  we  call  "  discrete,"  that  is,  as 
made  up  of  separate  units.  The  other  way,  to  which  we 
get  used  in  geometry  and  physics,  regards  quantity  aa. 
continuous.  The  one  fashion  counts  by  units,  the  other 

•VW»«M"I«*MIMMMM^MM««^WV        * 

measures  by  standards.  Now  in  the  ordinary  view,  this 
difference  in  the  methods  of  viewing  quantity  is  thought 
to  correspond  to  an  existent  difference  in  the  sorts  of 
quantity  that  the  world  contains.  There  are  discrete 
quantities  and  there  are  continuous  quantities.  But,  for 
Hegel,  the  notion  of  quantity,  as  it  truly  exists,  is  a  notion 
that  is  the  product  of  self-consciousness,  and  not  a  mere 
datum  of  sense.  As  such  a  product  of  self-conscious- 
ness, true  quantity  proves  to  be,  so  he  holds,  at  once  both 
continuous  and  discrete,  just  as  virtue  proved  to  be  der 
hochste  Kampf,  and  so  to  involve  both  good  and  eviL 
Quantity  is  a  mathematical  thing,  a  seemingly  cold  and 
lifeless  category,  while  virtue  is  obviously  a  creature  of 
holy  passion.  But  none  the  less  is  the  paradox  of  self- 
consciousness  present  in  the  idea  of  quantity,  just  as  in 
practical  life.  Discrete  quantity  consists  of  the  separate 
and  unjointed  units.  Continuous  quantity  resists  and 
even  defies  description  in  terms  of  disjunct  ultimate 
units,  as,  for  instance,  a  line  refuses  to  be  made  up  of 
points.  Yet,  as  Hegel  thinks  himself  able  to  show,  each 
of  these  sorts  of  quantity  is  such  that  when  you  try  to 
think  out  its  nature,  it  afflicts  itself,  so  to  speak,  with  the 
characteristics  of  the  other,  takes  them  on,1  as  Hegel  loves 

1  A  suggestion  of  Hegel's  technical  use  of  an  ihm  or  an  ihr.  Cf. 
Logik,  Werke,  vol.  iii.  p.  221  :  "  In  gewohnlichen  Vorstellungen  von 
continuirlicher  und  discreter  Grosse  wird  es  iibersehen,  dass  jede 
dieser  Grossen  beide  Momente,  sowohl  die  Continuitat  als  die  Discre- 
tion, an  ihr  hat." 


HEGEL.  221 

to  say,  in  all  such  cases,  just  as  the  good  will  takes  on  to 
itself  the  evil  impulse,  in  order  that  it  may  live  by  over- 
coming evil.  How  Hegel  tries  to  show  this  in  case  of 
quantity  I  have  indeed  no  time  to  expound* 

By  means  of  this  dialectical  method  Hegel  seeks,  more- 
over, not  only  to  show  each  logical  category  as  in  itself 
an  organism  of  opposed  and  yet  mutually  complementary 
elements,  but  also  to  show  all  these  fundamental  notions 
as  forming  one  system,  wherein  the  most  apparently 
diverse  and  disparate  ideas  are  actually  interrelated  as 
parts  of  the  one  highest  and  inclusive  category,  the  divine 
Idee,  or  total  thought  of  the  world,  whose  full  realization 
is  the  absolute  self  in  its  spiritual  wholeness.  The  abso- 
lute Idee  is  the  notion  of  the  complete  self,  regarded  just 
as  a  logical  category.  As  true  self,  it  appears  to  us  later, 
in  the  philosophy  of  spirit./  In  the  "  Logic  "  it  is  only  this 
thought  of  the  total  nature  of  things  as  being  in  the 
Hegelian  sense  self-determined.  This  thought  contains 
all  the  subordinate  categories  as  organic  parts  of  the 
total,  and  as  parts  whose  organic  relation  is  precisely 
such  as  this  dialectical,  this  paradoxical  nature  of  self-con 
sciousness  demands.  What  the  citizens  are  to  the  state, 
such  are  the  individual  categories  of  thought  to  the  abso- 
lute logical  Idee.  In  themselves  they  are  endlessly  con- 
flicting, and  they  are  yet  complementary  to  one  another. 
In  their  totality  they  form  but  one  highest  category,  the 
category  of  the  organic  unity  of  all  thoughts  in  one.  The 
Idee  is  also  called  by  Hegel  an  objectiver  Begriff?  the 
real  law  of  laws,  the  thought  of  the  organic  relation  of  aJJ 
things  and  thoughts  in  one  universal  order. 

One  may  thus  obviously  define  the  "  Logic  "  as  an  effort 
to  set  forth  all  fundamental  human  thoughts  as  forming  an 
organic  system.  This  character  of  the  "  Logic  "  the  most 
superficial  reader  at  once  sees.  What  is  missed  by  the 
superficial  reader  of  the  "  Logic  "  is  an  insight  into  what, 
1  Logik,  Werke,  vol.  v.  p.  230. 


222  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

according  to  Hegel's  notion,  constitutes  organic  unity,  into 
what  is  the  linkage  that  ties  together  the  members  ot  his 
kindjjl  nrganisflBr  This  linkage,  as  we  now  sufficiently 
know,  is  the  one  that  the  nature  of  self -consciousness  alone 
explains.  It  is  therefore  through  and  through  a  linkage 
of  opposing  and  complementary  members  by  reason  of 
their  very  oppositions.  This  is  the  source  of  the  perplex- 
ing analysis  of  contradictions  whereof  the  "  Logic  "  is  f  ulL 
The  success  or  failure  of  the  u  Logic  "  therefore  depends 
upon  its  author's  right  to  read  the  processes  of  the  higher 
practical  spirituality  into  the  products  of  purely  theoreti- 
cal thinking.  Here  is  the  crux  of  the  system. 

One  fundamental  consideration  remains  to  be  mentioned 
as  characterizing  the  "Logic."  Old-fashioned  logic  called 
itself  formal.  It  discussed  categories  and  methods  of 
thinking,  but  it  did  not  undertake  to  construct  concrete 
truths.  Its  forms  of  thought  were  never  real  things  for 
it.  But  Hegel's  categories  are,  of  course,  more  than  this. 
The  laws  of  thought  are  n't  mere  abstractions ;  they  are 
the  soul  of  things.  In  the  "  Logic "  one  is  constructing 
the  very  essence  of  the  world-self. 

Now,  Hegel  further  expressed  this  aspect  of  the  matter 
by  his  remarkable  doctrine  about  the  relation  between 
Begriffe^  or  universal  notions,  and  the  individual  facts 
that  fall  under  these  notions.  There  is  an  old  contro- 
versy as  to  whether  individual  things,  or  the  classes  that 
correspond  to  general  conceptions,  are  the  deepest  real- 
ities in  the  world.  Science,  as  Aristotle  said,  is  always  of 
the  general.  When  we  think,  we  always  think  of  classes, 
of  categories,  in  brief,  of  universals.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  facts  of  the  world  always  appear  to  our  senses 
to  be  individual.  Man,  as  a  mere  abstraction,  doesn't 
exist ;  individual  men  do.,  Here  is  one  of  the  most  per- 
plexing of  the  paradoxes  of  common  sense :  The  business 
of  science,  namely,  is  with  truth,  and  truth  is  always  uni- 
versal, is  known  to  us  as  the  notion  of  things,  the  law  of 


HEGEL.  223 

things,  the  essence  of  the  world.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
science  is  to  be  true  of  facts,  and  yet  the  facts,  at  alJ 
events  as  sense  views  them,  are  n't  universal,  but  are  just 
the  individual  facts.  This  opposition  between  the  form 
of  science,  which  is  universality,  and  the  matter  of  sci- 
ence, which  is  individual  fact,  gave  much  trouble  already 
to  Aristotle,1  into  whose  system  it  introduced  a  funda- 
mental contradiction.  Hegel  was  well  aware  of  this  con- 
tradiction between  the  Aristotelian  ideal  of  universal 
knowledge,  and  the  actual  theory  of  the  relation  of  uni- 
versals  and  individuals,  as  Aristotle  developed  it  in  his 
logical  treatises.2  But  this  ancient  paradox,  which  had 
given  ground  for  one  of  the  most  famous  of  the  contro- 
versies of  the  philosophy  of  the  Middle  Ages,  was  pre- 
cisely the  kind  of  paradox  that  Hegel's  method  was  pecu- 
liarly apt  to  characterize  and  deal  with.  In  attempting 
his  own  solution  of  the  problem  he  was  therefore  fully 
conscious  of  its  difficulty,  and  of  the  relative  novelty  of 
his  own  theory.  "  The  universal  in  its  true  and  inclusive 
sense  is  a  thought,"  he  once  says,8  "  that  it  has  cost  thou- 
sands of  years  to  bring  to  human  consciousness,  and  that 
received  its  full  recognition  only  through  the  aid  of  Chris- 
tianity. The  (greeks  knew  neither  God  nor  man  in  their  ^ 
true  universality."  The  philosophical  formulation  of  this 
thought  is  of  course,  according  to  Hegel,  later  than  its 
concrete  realization ;  yes,  this  philosophical  formulation 
of  the  "  inclusive  "  nature  of  the  universal  is  to  be  one  of 
Hegel's  own  peculiar  contributions  to  philosophical  theory. 

1  See  Zeller's  Philosophic  der  Griechen,  part  II.  section  2,  pp.  304- 
313  (3d  edition),  for  a  technical  exposition  of  the  resulting  diffi- 
culties. 

3  Compare  the  two  accounts  of  Aristotle's  method  of  work  in 
Hegel's  own  lectures  on  the  History  of  Philosophy,  Werke,  vol.  xiv. 
pp.  279,  282.  See,  also,  the  characterization  of  Aristotle's  Logic,  id., 
p.  368. 

*  In  a  lecture,  as  reported  by  one  of  his  students,  Werke,  voL  vL 
p.  321. 


224  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

The  true  universal,  namely,  or  as  Hegel  calls  it,  the  Be- 
griff,  whose  highest  expression  is  to  be  the  absolute  Idee, 
is  the  organic  union  of  the  universal  truth  and  the  indi. 
vidual  facts,  an  union  determined  by  the  principle  that 
every  truth  is  a  truth  constructed  by  the  thought  of  the 
world-self,  and  that  as  such  it  will  exemplify  just  that 
inultiplicity  of  individual  facts  in  the  all-embracing  and 
so  universal  unity  of  self-consciousness,  which  we  have 
now  so  fully  exemplified.  The  true  universal  of  the  whole 
world  is,  then,  the  divine  Idee,  or  "  all-enfolding  "  nature 
of  things,  the  true  genus  within  which  all  individual  facts 
fall.  This  universal  is  no  abstraction  at  all,  but  a  per- 
fectly concrete  whole,  since  the  facts  are,  one  and  all,  not 
mere  examples  of  it,  but  are  embraced  in  it,  are  brought 
forth  by  it  as  its  moments,  and  exist  only  in  relation  to 
one  another  and  to  it.  It  is  the  vine ;  they,  the  indi- 
viduals, are  the  branches.  It  is  in  nature  the  self.  They 
are  the  individual  thoughts,  aspects,  finite  expressions,  em- 
bodiments of  the  self.  '•'•All  reality"  says  Hegel,  in  one 
striking  passage,  "  is  the  Idee.  .  .  .  The  individual  being 
is  some  aspect  ( Seite)  of  the  Idee.  As  such  it  therefore 
needs  other  realities  [beside  it],  which  seem  as  if  they 
also  existed  all  by  themselves ;  yet  only  in  them  together 
and  in  their  relationship  is  the  universal  realized.  The 
individual  by  itself  does  not  embody  its  universal." 1 

Thus  the  paradox  of  the  relation  of  universal  and  indi- 
vidual is  to  be  solved  in  a  manner  peculiarly  character- 
istic of  the  whole  system.  The  true  law  is  to  be  the 
organic  total  of  the  facts  that  fall  under  it.  The  true 
general  class,  the  actual  object  of  science,  is  not  an  ab- 
stract something  exemplified  by  the  individuals,  nor  yet 
an  essence  that  is  to  be  found  in  each  individual.  There 
is  no  such  thing  for  Hegel  as  a  merely  individual  object 
of  thought  existent  all  alone  for  itself.  The  total  world 
of  the  interrelated  individuals  is  all  that  exists.  The  uni. 
1  Werke,  vol.  vi.  p.  385. 


HEGEL.  225 

versal  is  therefore  realized  in  this  totality  of  individual 
life.  For  the  nature  of  the  universal  is  the  nature  of  the 
self,  and  the  self  is  a  world  of  organically  interrelated 
selves,  moments  of  the  infinite  organism,  phases  of  its 
infinity.1 

One  could  not  mention  a  formula  more  characteristic 
of  the  Hegelian  doctrine  than  this  account  of  what  Hegel 
calls  the  "  concrete  universal,"  which  constructs,  brings 
forth,  in  the  endless  play  and  toil  of  rationality,  its  own 
"  differences,"  the  individuals  of  the  world  of  experience. 
It  is  this  which  for  him  explains  how  in  the  church  or  in 
the  state  we,  the  individuals,  find  ourselves  "members 
one  of  another."  It  is  this  that  shows  us  the  whole  world 
as  an  organism.  Wherever  this  sort  of  universality  is  not 
found,  as  is  the  case  in  the  world  of  un comprehended 
sense-facts,  where,  for  instance,  only  men  as  individuals 
seem  to  exist,  and  man  appears  to  us  as  a  dead  abstrac- 
tion, we  are  not  dealing  with  the  world  of  truth.  The 
first  sign  that  we  are  dealing  with  the  truth  itself  is  our 
success  in  discovering  an  organic  connection  amongst 
things.  For  organism  is  selfhood  or  personality  viewed 
in  its  outward  manifestation.  There  is,  then,  for  Hegel  a 
lower  form  of  thinking  that  reaches  only  a  Verstandes- 
Allgemeinheit.  Such  thinking  finds  itself  in  the  presence 
of  individual  facts,  and  regards  the  universal  either  as  a 
bare  abstraction,  or  else  as  present  only  in  each  individual 
as  its  inner  and  separate  nature.  For  such  thinking  the 
only  concrete  truth  is  the  world  of  individual  things  as 
such.  But  the  deeper  insight  into  the  world  is  revealed 

1  Hegel's  first  published  exemplification  of  this  doctrine  was  in 
the  before-mentioned  theory  of  the  Allgemeinhe.it  des  Bewusstseins,  as 
expounded  in  the  Phanomenologie.  In  the  Loyik  the  doctrine  receives 
a  most  intricate  and  elaborate  exposition.  It  is  in  later  writings  made 
the  basis  for  Hegel's  doctrine  of  the  state  and  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, although  it  was  almost  certainly  reached,  in  the  first  place, 
through  an  examination  of  just  these  instances.  For  further  citat'oiis 
see  Appendix  C. 


226  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

to  us  through  a  reflection  upon  the  nature  of  self-con- 
sciousness,  wherein  the  universal,  or  self,  is  the  organic 
total  of  the  facts  of  consciousness,  which  exist  not  save  as 
related  to  one  another,  and  to  this  universal.  The  true 
Universal  of  Hegel's  theory  is,  then,  what  our  own  Shelley 
so  well  described  when  he  told  us  in  the  "  Prometheus  " 

of  the 

"  One  undivided  Soul  of  many  a  soul 

Whose  nature  is  its  own  divine  control, 
Where  all  things  flow  to  all,  as  rivers  to  the  sea."  J 

Of  the  philosophy  of  nature  (Hegel's  most  unfinished 

and  weakest  undertaking),  and  of  the  philosophy  of  spirit 
(whereof  the  foregoing  has  already  contained  a  sugges- 
tion), it  is  not  our  office  here  to  treat.  These  matters  be- 
long in  their  fullness  to  technical  expositions,  upon  whose 
province  I  have  now  doubtless  too  much  trespassed. 

And  herewith  I  must  close  this  account.  It  will,  per- 
haps,  be  already  obvious  to  you  all  that  there  is  a  great 
deal  in  this  Hegelian  analysis  of  self-consciousness  that 
seems  to  me  of  permanent  and  obvious  value.  As  to  the 
finality  of  the  philosophical  doctrine  as  a  whole,  that  is 
another  matter  not  here  to  be  discussed.  Still,  I  may, 
perhaps,  do  well,  in  closing,  to  suggest  this  one  thought : 
People  usually  call  Hegel  a  cold-hearted  system-maker, 
who  reduced  all  our  emotions  to  purely  abstract  logical 
terms,  and  conceived  his  absolute  solely  as  an  incarnation 
of  dead  thought.  I,  on  the  contrary,  call  him  one  who 
knew  marvelously  well,  with  all  his  coldness,  the  secret 
of  human  passion,  and  who,  therefore,  described,  as  few 
others  have  done,  the  paradoxes,  the  problems,  and  the 
glories  of  the  spiritual  life.  His  great  philosophical  and 
systematic  error  lay,  not  in  introducing  logic  into  passion, 

1  The  Hegelian  theory  of  universals  is  well  sketched  in  Principal 
Caird's  Philosophy  of  Religion,  pp.  229-232.  See,  also,  p.  241,  where 
Principal  Caird  illustrates  the  true  universal  by  the  example  of  a 
family  with  many  members. 


HEGEL.  227 

but  in  conceiving  the  logic  of  passion  as  the  only  logic  j 
so  that  you  in  vain  endeavor  to  get  satisfaction  from 
Hegel's  treatment  of  outer  nature,  of  science,  of  mathe- 
matics, or  of  any  coldly  theoretical  topic.  About  all  these 
things  he  is  immensely  suggestive,  but  never  final.  His 
system,  as  system,  has  crumbled,  but  his  vital  comprehen- 
sion of  our  life  remains  forever. 


I/ 


LECTURE  VIIL 

SCHOPENHAUER. 

I  NEED  hardly  remark  in  the  presence  of  this  audience 
that  the  name  of  Schopenhauer  is  better  known  to  most 
general  readers,  in  our  day,  than  is  that  of  any  other  mod- 
ern Continental  metaphysician,  except  Kant.  The  reputed 
heretic  has  in  this  field  the  reward  of  his  dangerous  repu- 
tation, and  I  scarcely  know  whether  to  fear  or  to  rejoice, 
as  I  now  approach  the  treatment  of  so  noteworthy  and 
significant  a  man,  at  the  position  in  which  Schopenhauer's 
fame  puts  his  expositor.  In  one  respect,  of  course,  my 
task  is  rendered  easier  by  all  this  popular  repute  of  my 
hero.  Of  his  doctrine  most  of  us  have  heard  a  good  deal, 
and  many  of  us  may  have  followed  to  a  considerable  ex- 
tent his  reasoning;  at  all  events  we  have  become  ac- 
quainted, at  least  by  hearsay,  with  the  fact  that  his  out- 
come was  something  called  Pessimism.  And  thus,  in 
dealing  with  him,  I  am  not  voyaging  with  you  in  seas  un- 
known to  all  but  the  technical  students  of  philosophy,  as 
was  last  time  the  case,  when  I  told  you  of  Hegel.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  kind  of  reputation  that  his  writings  have 
very  naturally  won  is  decidedly  against  me  when  I  under- 
take to  treat  him  with  genuinely  philosophical  fairness.  It 
is  so  much  easier  to  be  edifying  than  to  face  with  courage 
certain  serious  and  decidedly  tragic  realities  I  Let  me  be 
frank  with  you,  then,  at  the  outset  about  my  difficulty.  It 
is,  plainly  stated,  simply  this:  You  have  Keard  that 
Schopenhauer  is  a  pessimist.  You,  meanwhile,  are  surety 
for  the  most  part  no  pessimists.  Therefore,  as  we  ap- 
proach Schopenhauer,  you  want  me,  in  your  secret  hearts, 


SCHOPENHAUER.  229 

if  not  in  your  expressed  wishes,  to  refute  Schopenhauer. 
Now  refutation  is,  as  I  have  already  tried  to  maintain,  a 
thing  of  only  very  moderate  service  in  the  study  of  phi- 
losophy. We  may  refute  a  great  thinker's  accidental  mis- 
judgments  ;  we  can  seldom  refute  his  deeper  insights. 
And  as  I  must  forthwith  assure  you,  and  shall  very  soon 
show  you,  Schopenhauer's  pessimism  is  actually  expres- 
sive of  a  very  deep  insight  into  life.  This  insight  is  in- 
deed not  a  final  one.  We  must  transcend  it.  But  surely 
you  would  justly  discover  me  in  a  very  unphilosophical,  and 
in  fact  very  unworthily  self-contradictory,  attitude  if  now, 
after  all  these  successive  efforts  to  show  you  a  continuity 
and  a  common  body  of  truth  in  the  modern  philosophers, 
I  should  suddenly,  at  this  point  of  my  discourse,  assume 
the  airs  of  a  champion  of  the  faith  against  the  infidels, 
and  should  fall  to  hewing  and  hacking  at  Schopenhauer 
with  genuinely  crusading  zeal.  In  fact  it  is  not  my  call- 
ing to  do  anything  of  the  sort.  I  always  admire  the  cru- 
saders, but  my  admiration  is  due  rather  to  their  enthusi- 
asm than  to  their  philosophical  many-sidedness  ;  rather  to 
the  vitality  of  their  faith  than  to  the  universality  of  their 
comprehension.  I  fear  that  if  I  should  try  to  join  my- 
self unto  them  they  would  not  accept  me  without  reserve. 
I  cannot  therefore  treat  Schopenhauer  as  a  crusader  would 
treat  him.  He  is  to  me  a  philosopher  of  considerable 
dignity,  whom  we  could  ill  spare  from  the  roll  of  modern 
thinkers ;  whom  I  do  not  by  any  means  follow  as  disciple, 
but  to  whom  I  owe,  in  common  with  other  philosophical 
students,  a  great  deal,  for  his  skillful  analysis  and  for  his 
fearlessly  clear  assertion  of  his  own  significant  tempera- 
ment. 

I- 

But  as  to  pessimism  itself,  Schopenhauer's  famous  doc- 
trine, as  to  this  terrible  view  that  life  is  through  and 
through  tragic  and  evil,  what  is  my  attitude  towards  that  ? 
I  must,  you  will  probably  say,  either  accept  it,  and  then 


230  THE  SPIRIT  OP  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

must  avow  it  in  manly  fashion,  or  I  must  reject  it.  And 
if  I  reject  it,  then  I  am  bound  to  refute  it.  My  answer 
to  the  question  is  not  far  to  seek.  As  an  actual  fact  I 
do  accept,  and  avow  with  perfect  freedom,  what  to  many 
gentle  minds  seems,  as  I  am  aware,  a  pessimistic  view  of 
life ;  namely,  precisely  the  view  that  at  the  last  time  we 
found  Hegel  maintaining  and  expanding  into  his  marvel- 
ously  ingenious  and  technical  doctrine  of  what  he  called 
Negativitat  as  the  very  essence  of  the  passionate  spirit- 
ual existence.  The  spiritual  life  is  n't  a  gentle  or  an 
easy  thing.  It  is  indeed  through  and  through  and  forever 
paradoxical,  earnest,  enduring,  toilsome  ;  yes,  if  you  like, 
painfully  tragic.  Whoever  hopes  to  find  it  anything  else, 
either  now  or  in  some  far-off  heaven,  hopes  unquestionably 
in  vain.  If  that  is  pessimism,  —  and  in  one  sense,  namely, 
in  the  sense  in  which  many  tender  but  thoughtless  souls 
have  used  the  phrase,  it  is  pessimism,  being  opposed  to 
the  gentle  and  optimistic  hopes  of  such,  —  then  I  am  now, 
and  always  shall  be,  in  that  very  sense  no  optimist,  but  a 
maintainer  of  the  sterner  view  that  life  is  forever  tragic. 
In  so  far  as  Schopenhauer  has  sought  to  make  this  plain, 
I  follow  him  unhesitatingly,  and  honor  him  for  his  merci- 
lessness.  Why  I  do  so  I  shall  try  to  make  plain  before 
this  lecture  is  done.  In  so  far,  however,  as  Schopenhauer 
held  that  the  tragedy  of  life  disheartens  every  spirit  that 
has  once  come  to  know  the  truth,  I  as  plainly  and  abso- 
lutely reject  so  much  of  his  outcome.  The  world  is,  on  the 
whole,  very  nearly  as  tragic  as  Schopenhauer  represents 
it  to  be.  Only  spirituality  consists  in  being  heroic  enough 
to  accept  the  tragedy  of  existence,  and  to  glory  in  the 
strength  wherewith  it  is  given  to  the  true  lords  of  life  to 
conquer  this  tragedy,  and  to  make  their  world  after  all 
divine.  The  way  to  meet  Schopenhauer's  pessimism  is, 
not  to  refute  its  assertions,  but  to  grapple  practically  with 
its  truths.  And  if  you  do  so,  you  will  find  as  the  real 
heart  and  significance  of  Schopenhauer's  own  gloomy 


SCHOPENHAUER.  231 

thought,  a  vital,  yes,  even  a  religious  assurance,  which 
will  make  you  thank  God,  that,  as  we  tried  to  suggest  by 
a  phrase  quoted  in  an  earlier  lecture,  the  very  ice  and 
cold,  the  very  frost  and  snow,  of  philosophy  praise  and 
magnify  him  forever.  In  short,  my  attitude  towards  pes- 
simism is  one  that,  some  years  ago,  in  an  article  written 
for  a  Harvard  College  journal,  I  tried  to  express  in  words 
suggested  by  the  then  current  accusation  that  too  many 
Harvard  students  of  ability  were  accustomed  to  pose  as 
pessimists.  If  I  quote  now  my  former  words,  it  is  only 
because  the  right  bearing  towards  such  matters  seems  to 
me  so  simple  that  when  I  try  to  express  it,  I  am  troubled 
with  a  poverty  of  phrases,  and  have  to  fall  back  on  oft 
repeated  formulae,  for  which  perhaps  some  defiant  inter- 
jection, hurled  into  the  face  of  our  common  enemy,  namely, 
the  inner  spiritual  sluggishness  wherewith  a  man  is  so 
easily  beset,  would  be  the  best  embodiment.  But,  at  all 
events,  these  were  my  poor  words :  — 

"One  hears  nowadays,  very  often,  of  youthful  pessi- 
mism, prevalent,  for  instance,  among  certain  clever  college 
students.  When  I  hear  of  these  things,  I  do  not  always 
regret  them.  On  the  contrary,  I  think  that  the  best  man 
is  the  one  who  can  see  the  truth  of  pessimism,  can  ab- 
sorb and  transcend  that  truth,  and  can  be  nevertheless  an 
optimist,  not  by  virtue  of  his  failure  to  recognize  the  evil 
of  life,  but  by  virtue  of  his  readiness  to  take  part  in  the 
struggle  against  this  evil.  Therefore,  I  am  often  glad 
when  I  hear  of  this  spread  of  pessimistic  ideas  among 
studious  but  undeveloped  youth.  For,  I  say  to  myself,  if 
these  men  are  brave  men,  their  sense  of  the  evil  that  hin- 
ders our  human  life  will  some  day  arouse  them  to  fight  this 
evil  in  dead  earnest,  while  if  they  are  not  brave  men,  opti- 
mism can  be  of  no  service  to  cowards.  But  in  any  case  I 
like  to  suggest  to  such  brave  and  pessimistic  youth  where 
the  solution  of  their  problem  must  lie.  It  surely  cannot 
lie  in  any  romantic  dream  of  a  pure  and  innocent  world. 


232  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

far  off  somewhere,  in  the  future,  in  heaven  or  in  the  islea 
of  the  blessed.  These  things  are  not  for  us.  We  are  born 
for  the  world  of  manly  business,  and  if  we  are  worthy  of 
our  destiny,  we  may  possibly  have  some  good  part  in  the 
wars  of  the  Lord.  For  nothing  better  have  we  any  right 
to  hope,  and  for  an  honest  man  that  is  enough." 

If  these  words  which  I  have  quoted  seem  to  you  rather 
unfeeling  in  their  hardness,  I  beseech  you  to  wait  until  I 
am  done,  not  merely  with  to-day's  exposition  of  Schopen- 
hauer, but  with  my  whole  course,  before  you  judge  them. 
As  for  living  up  to  this  obvious,  but  tremendously  difficult 
kind  of  courage,  of  course  you  will  not  need  to  hear  me 
say  that  a  student  of  philosophy  finds  that  quite  as  hard 
a  task  as  do  any  of  his  neighbors.  I  am  only  stating  the 
doctrine.  A  coward  is  not  an  admirable  person,  but  it 
is  only  too  easy  to  be  one. 

Thus,  then,  forsaking  for  the  moment  my  position  as 
chronicler,  I  try  to  tell  you,  in  this  wholly  unoriginal  fash- 
ion, what,  to  be  sure,  has  always  been  the  creed  of  brave 
men  ever  since  our  remote  ancestors,  or  their  cousins, 
struggled  with  the  climate  of  the  glacial  period.  And 
having  thus  freed  my  mind  and  defined  my  attitude  to- 
wards pessimism,  I  can  venture  to  assume  once  more  the 
position  of  the  historical  student,  and  to  set  forth  some- 
thing of  Schopenhauer's  contribution  to  the  great  philo- 
sophic task  of  modern  humanity. 

n. 

The  general  character  and  worth  of  this  contribution  I 
must  first  describe,  and  in  doing  so  I  shall  follow  in  the 
main  the  view  of  a  recent  German  writer  on  the  history  of 
philosophy,  namely,  Professor  Windelband,  to  whose  well- 
known  book,  "  Die  Geschichte  der  neueren  Philosophic," 
these  lectures  have  owed  throughout  not  a  little.  Modern 
idealism,  as  it  developed  since  Kant,  was  from  the  first  an 
effort  to  discover  the  rationality  of  our  world  through  an 


SCHOPENHAUER.  233 

analysis  of  the  nature  of  consciousness.  Such  analysis 
was  the  problem  that  Kant  bequeathed  to  his  successors. 
For  Kant  showed  that  we  know  the  world  only  in  terms 
of  consciousness  and  its  laws,  so  that  the  understanding 
is  the  creator  of  the  show  nature  that  stands  before  our 
senses.  Fichte  tried  to  solve  this  Kantian  problem  by 
proving  that  it  is  the  moral  law  which  is  the  very  heart 
and  essence  of  our  consciousness,  so  that  our  seemingly 
outer  world  is  there  as  a  means  whereby  we  can  do  our 
work  and  win  our  deeper  self.  The  romanticists,  how- 
ever, felt  that  consciousness  was  no  more  exhaustively 
expressed  by  the  moral  will  than  by  any  other  humane  in- 
terest of  the  self.  Thus,  there  entered  into  philosophy  a 
reign  of  caprice,  to  which  even  Hegel  did  not  put  an  end. 
Once  understand  the  nature  of  this  caprice,  and  you  will 
see  the  place  which  Schopenhauer's  system  is  to  hold  in 
the  development  of  doctrine. 

Were  it  not,  says  all  idealism,  were  it  not  that  I  am 
just  such  a  conscious  being  as  I  am,  my  world  would  be 
a  wholly  different  one  from  the  world  that  I  see.  To 
know  the  real  nature  of  my  world  I  must  therefore  un- 
derstand my  own  deeper  self.  Is  there  anything  fixed, 
stable,  necessary,  about  my  nature?  If  so,  then  I  am 
necessarily  forced  to  exist  in  just  this  sort  of  world.  But 
if  I  am  essentially  of  no  one  fixed  and  necessary  nature, 
then  at  any  moment  my  whole  world  might  alter.  The 
ordinary  realism  of  common  sense  does  n't  fear  this, 
does  n't  feel  the  necessity  of  an  ultimate  appeal  to  any- 
thing stable  or  fixed  about  me  as  the  real  source  of  truth, 
because  ordinary  realism  holds  that  the  truth  is  there 
beyond  me,  as  something  knowable  to  all  people  of  good 
intelligence,  in  the  hard  and  fast  matter  of  the  world  of 
sense.  There  is  the  moon  yonder.  For  ordinary  realism, 
the  moon  is  as  permanent  as  nature  makes  it,  and  stays 
there  whether  any  one  knows  it  or  not.  Hence,  in  order 
to  ask  whether  there  is  anything  stable  about  the  world, 


234  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

ordinary  realism  has  to  put  no  questions  to  the  inner  life. 
But  the  very  essence  of  idealism  it  is  to  say,  My  moon, 
the  moon  that  I  see  and  talk  about,  the  moon  of  my  own 
world  of  outer  show  and  of  empirical  knowledge,  is  just 
one  of  my  ideas.  You  see  the  same  moon  only  in  so  far 
as  in  your  world,  in  your  inner  life,  there  is  a  fact  truly 
corresponding  to  what  I  call  the  moon  in  my  inner  life. 
Therefore,  if  you  and  I  are  to  continue  to  see  the  same 
moon,  that  must  be  because  both  of  us  have  some  common 
and  necessary  deeper  nature,  a  true  and  abiding  oneness 
of  spirit,  that  forces  us  to  agree  in  this  respect  as  to  our 
inner  life.  Hence,  not  the  abiding  matter  of  the  moon, 
as  something  that  should  stay  there  when  you  and  I  had 
both  departed,  but  some  common  law  that  holds  for  your 
spirit  as  for  mine,  is  the  basis  for  the  seeming  perma- 
nence and  common  outer  reality  of  the  moon  for  us. 
The  moon  has  the  same  sort  of  objective  existence  that, 
for  instance,  at  this  moment,  my  lecture  has.  The  lec- 
ture exists  as  thought  in  me,  and  as  experience  in  you. 
But  because  of  a  certain  community  of  our  thoughts,  we 
all  of  us  have  the  same  lecture  more  or  less  present  to  us. 
We  all  of  us,  moreover,  regard  the  lecture  as  an  outer 
reality,  and  we  therefore  seem  to  be  as  much  in  presence 
of  an  objective  fact  as  if  the  lecture  were  made  of  real 
atoms,  instead  of  ideas.  Or  again,  for  the  idealistic  view, 
the  existence  of  the  events  in  matter,  or  of  any  other  ex- 
ternal events,  resembles  the  existence  at  any  instant  of  the 
price  of  a  stock  in  the  stock-market,  or  the  credit  of  a  great 
firm  in  the  commercial  world.  A  consensus  of  the  thoughts 
of  the  buyer  and  sellers  exists  at  any  moment,  which,  how- 
ever  well  founded,  or  again  however  arbitrary  and  chan- 
ging this  consensus  may  be,  is  expressed  for  the  instant  as 
if  it  were  a  hard  and  fast  material  thing  in  a  genuinely 
outer  world.  In  fact,  prices  and  credits  are  ideas,  and 
exist  in  the  show-world  of  market  values  and  of  commer- 
cial securities,  being  but  the  projections  of  the  various 


SCHOPENHAUER.  236 

ideas  of  people  as  these  at  any  moment  agree  to  express 
themselves.  Even  so,  then,  just  as  this  lecture  is  at  this 
instant  a  fact  because  our  minds  agree  in  making  it  so, 
and  just  as  the  price  of  the  stock,  or  the  credit  of  the 
great  firm,  is  an  often  irresistible  fact,  to  which  the  indi- 
vidual dealer  must  yield  in  so  far  as  his  own  financial 
might  is  n't  equal  to  altering  it,  even  so  the  moon  yonder 
is  likewise  for  us  all  an  outer  fact,  because  we  are  forced 
to  agree  in  regarding  it  as  outer.  But  our  agreement 
itself  is  a  fact  of  the  deeper  life  of  our  common  selfhood. 

Such  common  ideas  being,  then,  the  idealist's  true 
world,  his  problem  it  is  to  determine  whether  there  is  any 
deeper  and  impersonally  human  necessity  which  guaran- 
tees that  our  ideas  shall  thus  in  any  wise  agree.  This 
necessity  must  be  sought,  if  at  all,  in  our  own  hidden  na- 
ture. Constructive  idealists  have  always  sought  it  in  that 
common  band  of  rationality  which,  as  they  conceive,  so 
links  us  all  together  that  we  are  organically  related  parts 
or  moments  of  one  deeper  self.  This  self,  which  shall  ex- 
press itself  in  you,  in  me,  in  everybody,  is  to  link  your 
experience  to  mine  in  such  fashion  that  we  shall  see 
related  outer  worlds.  Because  this  self  in  you  constructs 
a  show-space  in  three  dimensions,  and  does  a  similar  thing 
for  me,  therefore  we  alike  look  out  into  the  depths  of 
space,  where  the  same  stars  seem  to  glitter  for  us  all. 
Unity,  fixity,  assurance,  we  get,  if  we  get  such  prizes  at 
all,  only  by  virtue  of  that  rational  and  spiritual  unity  that 
is  beneath  our  lives.  Can  the  philosopher  find  the  true 
heart  and  essence  of  this  our  common  selfhood?  If  he 
can,  then  idealism  becomes  a  system.  We  are,  then,  all  in 
one  world  of  truth.  The  outer  world  is  indeed  show,  but 
no  illusion ;  and  our  life  has  an  organic  fixity,  a  lawful 
completeness  about  it,  such  as  every  philosophy  longs  for. 

But  now,  unfortunately,  when  idealists  set  about  dedu- 
cing this  unity  and  consistency  of  the  spiritual  world  from 
some  deep  inner  principle,  their  reflection  always  leaves  us 


236  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

in  one  great  respect  dissatisfied.  We  very  certainly, 
namely,  can  never  deduce  from  the  idea  of  our  common 
spirituality  the  idea  of  any  particular  sense  thing,  such  as 
the  moon.  Or,  to  repeat  one  of  my  former  illustrations, 
idealists  can't  tell  us  why  we  are  spiritually  or  rationally 
bound  all  alike  to  perceive  a  starry  world,  wherein  there 
shall  be  a  belt  of  telescopic  asteroids  between  the  orbits  of 
Mars  and  Jupiter.  Such  facts  idealists  get,  like  their 
neighbors,  from  daily  experience  or  from  science.  Ideal- 
ists may  say  in  general,  as  Fichte  said,  that  the  moral  law 
needs  a  world  of  outer  experience  as  the  material  for  its 
embodiment.  They  cannot  show  why  just  this  material 
is  needed.  There  remains,  then,  an  element  of  brute  fact, 
a  residuum,  if  you  choose,  of  spiritual  caprice,  in  their 
world  of  the  all-embracing  self.  Perhaps  we  have,  as 
they  say,  the  one  deeper  self  in  common,  perhaps  this 
deeper  self  has  rational  grounds  for  building  in  us  all 
alike  just  this  world  of  sense,  of  moons,  of  asteroids,  or 
comets,  of  jelly-fish,  and  of  all  the  rest,  only  there  is  still, 
from  our  finite  point  of  view,  a  vast  element  of  at  least 
apparent  caprice  about  the  entire  universe  of  the  spirit  as 
thus  built.  And  all  idealists  have  to  recognize  this  fact 
of  the  seeming  capriciousness  of  the  external  order.  The 
universal  reason  builds  the  world,  says  idealism  ;  but  then 
does  not  the  universal  reason  seem  to  build  many  irra- 
tional facts  into  its  world?  You  see  then  the  difficulty. 
Our  common  spiritual  nature  is  to  guarantee  the  truth  of 
our  common  experience.  Unless  this  nature  has  some 
hard  and  fast  necessity  in  it,  of  which  we  can  form  an 
adequate  conception,  there  is  no  satisfaction  in  our  philo- 
sophy. But  when  we  try  to  develop  this  idea  of  the  uni- 
versal necessity  of  the  world  of  our  common  selfhood,  we 
come  once  more  against  an  element  of  the  most  stubborn 
caprice.  Idealism  seems  to  be  an  insight  as  suggestive 
and  inspiring  as  it  is  limited.  The  nature  of  this  divine 
self  has  something  seemingly  irrational  about  it.  Our 


SCHOPENHAUER.  237 

attempted  account  of  the  world  in  terms  of  the  universal 
reason  therefore  remains  so  far  a  mere  programme,  a  pos- 
tulate, almost  a  dogma.  And  yet  dogmas  were  just  what 
our  philosophy  had  all  along  been  trying  to  reduce  and  to 
rationalize. 

In  view  of  this  common  perplexity  of  all  the  idealistic 
systems,  there  were  certain  to  arise,  upon  the  historical 
basis  of  the  Kantian  theory,  philosophies  that  not  only 
accepted  the  perplexity,  but  that  magnified  it,  that  re- 
ferred it  to  the  very  nature  of  the  quasi-mental  reality 
behind  the  world  of  sense,  and  that  declared :  "  Deeper 
than  reason,  in  this  world  of  the  ideal  existence,  is  the 
caprice  which  once  for  all  expresses  itself  in  the  wealth 
of  nature's  facts."  Of  such  systems  Schopenhauer's  phi- 
losophy is  the  classic  representative.  Not  that  Schopen- 
hauer was  in  this  general  tendency  alone.  Windelband 
very  properly  classes  under  the  same  head  Schelling's 
later  theologico-philosophical  speculations  (not  studied  in 
these  lectures)  along  with  two  or  three  other  doctrines. 
Windelband  calls  them  all  by  the  common  name  Ir ratio- 
nalismus.  A  doctrine  of  this  sort,  upon  a  Kantian  basis, 
must  run  somewhat  as  follows:  The  world  as  we  see  it 
exists  only  in  our  ideas.  We  all  have  a  common  outer 
show-world  because  we  all  possess  a  common  deeper 
nature,  wherein  we  are  one.  You  are  essentially  the 
same  ultimate  being  that  I  am.  Otherwise  we  should  not 
have  in  common  this  outer  projected  world  of  seeming 
sea  waves,  star  clusters,  and  city  streets.  For,  as  ideas, 
those  things  have  no  outer  basis.  As  common  to  us  all, 
they  must  have  a  deep  inner  basis.  Yet  this  their  basis 
can't  be  anything  ultimately  and  universally  rational. 
For  in  so  far  as  we  actually  have  reason  in  common, 
we  think  necessary,  clearly  coherent,  exactly  interrelated 
groups  of  ideas,  such,  for  instance,  as  the  multiplication 
table.  But  about  the  star  clusters  and  the  sea  waves 
there  is  no  such  ultimate  rational  unity  and  coherency. 


238  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Natural  laws  only  bind  such  things  together,  in  the  fash- 
ion that  Kant  so  prettily  explained,  in  case  the  pheno- 
mena to  be  bound  together  are  once  for  all  there.  Why, 
given  sea  waves  and  star  clusters  and  city  streets,  we 
should  be  bound  to  think  them  as  in  some  sort  of  inter- 
connection, Kant  has  told  us.  Only  no  such  laws  of 
nature  can  explain  why  there  should  be  the  phenomena 
there  that  are  thus  to  conform  to  law.  This  is  capricious. 
This  is  due  to  our  common  but  irrational  nature.  The 
world  of  the  true  idealism  is  n't  so  much  the  world  of  the 
rational  and  divine  self,  as  it  is  the  world  of  the  deep 
unreason  that  lies  at  the  very  basis  of  all  of  our  natures, 
of  all  our  common  selfhood.  Why  should  there  be  any 
world  at  all  for  us  ?  Is  n't  it  just  because  we  are  all  actu- 
ally minded  to  see  one  ?  And  is  n't  this  being  minded  to 
see  a  world  as  ultimately  and  brutally  unreasonable  a 
fact  as  you  could  name  ?  Let  us  find  for  this  fact,  then,  a 
name  not  so  exalted  as  Fichte's  high-sounding  speech 
would  love.  Let  us  call  this  ultimate  nature  of  ours, 
which  forces  us  all  alike  to  see  a  world  of  phenomena  in 
the  show  forms  of  space  and  time,  simply  our  own  deep 
common  Will.  Let  us  drop  the  divine  name  for  it.  Will, 
merely  as  such,  is  n't  precisely  a  rational  thing ;  it 's 
capricious.  It  wills  because  it  does  will ;  and  if  it  wills 
in  us  all  to  be  of  such  nature  as  to  see  just  these  stars  and 
houses,  then  see  them  we  must,  and  there  is  the  end  of  it. 
Thus  stated,  you  have  an  irrationalism  on  an  idealistic 
basis,  a  doctrine  that  may  be  summed  up  in  three  propo- 
sitions ;  — 

1.  The  world  has  existence  only  as  we  see  it. 

2.  What  facts  we  are  to  see  can  only  be  learned  from 
experience,  and  cannot  be  found  a  priori  through  any 
absurd  transcendental  deductions  of  the  so-called  essence 
of  any  absolute  spirit. 

3.  The  deepest  ground,  however,  for  all   these   seen 
facts,  and  for  the  community  of  our  various  visible  worlds. 


SCHOPENHAUER.  239 

is  the  common  and  single  World- Will,  which,  expressed  in 
all  of  us  equally,  forces  us  to  see  alike,  but  does  so  simply 
because  this  is  the  particular  caprice  that  it  happens  to 
have,  so  that  it  embodies  itself  for  us  and  in  us  as  just 
this  show-world,  rather  than  any  other,  because  such  is  its 
fashion  of  willing. 

The  obvious  value  of  such  a  theory  is  that  it  is  at  once 
idealistic  in  its  analysis  of  the  presuppositions  of  life,  just 
to  the  direct  and  irresistible  reality  of  the  facts  of  experi- 
ence, and  disposed,  after  all,  to  go  deeper  than  experience 
in  its  search  for  the  ultimate  truth  of  the  world.  Final  it 
certainly  is  not  in  this  form.  But  it  has  an  obvious 
advantage  over  the  sort  of  caprice  that,  as  we  saw,  was 
characteristic  of  the  philosophy  of  the  romantic  school. 
Their  caprice  was  the  fickleness  of  private  and  individual 
choice.  For  them  you  can  change,  as  it  were,  at  any 
moment  of  time,  your  show-world.  For  them  the  man  of 
genius  makes  whatever  world  he  chooses.  But  for  this 
theory  of  Schopenhauer's  there  is  but  one  caprice,  and 
that  is  the  caprice  of  the  World- Will  itself,  which  once  for 
all  has  hit  upon  this  particular  world  of  facts  in  time  and 
in  space.  For  us,  in  our  individual  capacity,  there  is  no 
further  caprice.  We  are  in  presence  of  this  world  now, 
because  we  ourselves  are  embodiments  of  the  world- will. 
We  cannot  help  the  fact  any  longer.  Experience  is  expe- 
rience ;  fact  is  fact ;  the  show  is  going  on  for  us  all  alike ; 
the  world-will  has  chosen ;  but  it  has  not  chosen  at  any 
point  in  time.  Hence  in  the  world,  as  it  is  in  time,  there 
is  no  further  caprice,  only  fact.  Time  itself  is  indeed  not 
any  ultimate  reality.  Time  belongs  to  the  show-world, 
and  is  there  like  any  other  fact  or  form  of  things,  because 
the  world-will  fancies  such  a  form  for  the  things  of  sense. 
But  just  for  this  very  reason,  we,  as  individuals,  are  just 
where  we  are,  and  the  realities  of  sense  and  of  science, 
although  susceptible  of  so  deep  and  mysterious  an  inter- 
pretation as  this,  are  as  inevitable  and  as  objective  for  us 


240  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

as  ever  the  most  naive  and  unreflectively  superficial  reaJ- 
ism  made  them.  As  against  such  realism  our  doctrine 
possesses  depth,  philosophical  keenness  of  analysis,  ideal- 
istic insight.  As  against  the  romantic  idealism,  cur  doc- 
trine has  the  advantage  of  objectivity  and  fixity.  Just 
because  our  common  temporal  existence  is  part  of  the 
caprice  of  the  World- Will,  this  temporal  existence  itself 
has  for  us  individuals  reality  and  fixity. 

So  much  for  the  theoretical  side  of  our  author's  doc- 
trine. On  the  practical  side,  in  respect,  namely,  of  his 
pessimism,  we  shall  find  Schopenhauer  in  a  very  interest- 
ing historical  relation  to  Hegel.  In  fact,  as  we  shall 
learn,  our  author's  pessimism  is  but  another  aspect  of  the 
same  insight  into  the  paradoxical  logic  of  passion  which 
we  have  discovered  at  the  heart  of  Hegel's  doctrine.  It 
is  true  that  Schopenhauer's  World-Will,  this  blind  power 
that,  according  to  him,  embodies  itself  in  our  universe, 
appears  in  his  account,  at  first,  as  something  that  might 
be  said  to  possess  passion  without  logic.  Yet  this  first 
view  of  the  World-Will  soon  turns  out  to  be  inadequate. 
The  very  caprice  of  the  terrible  principle  is  seen,  as  we  go 
on,  to  involve  a  sort  of  secondary  rationality,  a  logic,  fatal 
and  gloomy,  as  well  as  deeply  paradoxical,  but  still  none 
the  less  truly  rational  for  all  that.  Schopenhauer's  world 
is,  in  fact,  tragic  in  much  the  same  sense  as  Hegel's. 
Only,  for  Schopenhauer  the  tragedy  is  hopeless,  blind, 
undivine  ;  while  for  Hegel  it  is  the  divine  tragedy  of  the 
much-tried  Logos,  whose  joy  is  above  all  the  sorrows  of 
his  world.  Were  this  difference  between  these  two  think- 
ers merely  one  of  personal  and  speculative  opinion,  it 
might  have  little  significance.  But  since  it  involves,  as 
we  shall  find,  one  of  the  most  truly  vital  problems  of  our 
modern  life,  one  which  meets  us  at  every  step  in  our  liter- 
ature and  in  our  ethical  controversies,  we  shall  find  it  well 
worth  our  while  to  study  the  contrast  more  closely.  First, 
then,  here,  let  us  see  something  of  the  man  Schopenhauer, 
and  afterwards  we  may  estimate  the  doctrine. 


SCHOPENHAUER.  241 

III. 

Arthur  Schopenhauer,  born  in  1788,  was  probably 
descended,  on  the  father's  side,  from  a  Dutch  family. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  wealthy  merchant  of  Danzig,  His 
mother,  the  once  noted  Johanna  Schopenhauer,  brilliant 
novelist,  and  in  her  later  years  ambitious  hostess  in  the 
literary  circles  at  Weimar,  had  married,  as  she  very 
frankly  tells  us,  not  from  love,  but  for  position.  On  both 
sides,  Schopenhauer's  ancestry  was  somewhat  burdened,  as 
we  should  say,  in  respect  of  nerves,  although  this  fact  is 
decidedly  more  marked  on  the  father's  side.  The  philo- 
sopher's paternal  grandmother  was  declared  insane  during 
the  latter  years  of  her  life ;  and  of  his  uncles,  on  the 
same  side,  one  was  idiotic,  and  one  was  given  to  excesses 
of  the  neurotic  type.  Schopenhauer's  father,  a  busy  and 
uncommonly  intelligent  man,  many-sided  and  successful, 
still  suffered,  towards  the  last,  from  the  family  trouble. 
He  showed  at  fifty-eight  years  of  age  occasional  but  acute 
symptoms  of  an  excited  form  of  derangement,  lost,  mean- 
while, his  memory  for  well-known  persons,  and  very  soon 
died  under  mysterious  circumstances  that  strongly  indicated 
an  insane  suicide.  Johanna  herself  war>  indeed  personally 
quite  free  from  noteworthy  nervous  defect,  unless  heart- 
lessness  be  reckoned  as  such.  The  philosopher  himself, 
as  is  well  known,  lived  in  excellent  general  health  until 
past  seventy,  dying  in  1860,  of  a  cause  having  no  appar- 
ent relation  to  nervous  difficulties.  Still,  especially  in 
youth,  he  was  vexed  by  his  hereditary  burden  enough  to 
enable  us  without  question  to  associate  his  pessimism  in 
some  measure  with  his  temperament.  Several  neuras- 
thenic symptoms  are  reported,  showing  themselves  in  spo- 
radic but  decided  forms,  —  night-terrors,  of  a  known 
pathological  type ;  causeless  depressions ;  a  persistent  dread 
of  possible  misfortunes;  a  complaining  and  frequently 
unbearable  ill  humor,  with  attendant  crises  of  violent  tern- 


242  THE  SPIKIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

per.  A  troublesome  and  slowly  growing  deafness,  similar 
to  one  manifest  in  his  father,  is  referred  to  the  same 
cause.  Against  these  stood  always  a  very  fine  general 
constitution  and  a  rather  over-anxiously  guarded  fashion 
of  life.  The  question  suggested  by  all  these  facts,  —  the 
well-known  question  whether  Schopenhauer's  pessimism 
was  mainly  due  to  mere  morbidness  of  temperament,  was 
in  short  mere  Stimmungspessimismus,  —  is  not  so  easy  to 
decide  as  some  of  his  critics  fancy.  In  fact,  the  man  was 
unquestionably  incapable  of  a  permanently  cheerful  view 
of  life,  —  was  a  born  outcast,  doomed  to  hide  and  to 
be  lonely.  Unquestionably,  moreover,  he  was  given  to 
pettiness  in  the  minor  relations  of  life,  was  vain,  uncom- 
panionable, and  bitter.  But  then,  many  clever  men  have 
had  all  these  burdens  to  bear,  without  being  able  to  see 
the  tragedy  of  life  as  wisely  and  deeply  as  Schopenhauer 
saw  it.  He  would  have  said  of  his  own  unhappy  temper 
very  much  what  he  once  said  of  the  crimes  of  Napoleon's 
career,  namely,  that  there  are  conditions  which  make 
manifest  the  latent  evil  of  human  selfishness,  the  dangers 
of  the  restless  will  that  is  in  us  all  alike,  better  than  do 
other  conditions,  but  which  do  not  therefore  create  their 
latent  evil.  It  will  not  do  in  any  case  to  state  the  case 
against  Schopenhauer's  pessimism  in  such  shallow  fashion 
as  to  make  it  appear  that,  whilst  all  pessimism  is  mere 
pettiness,  all  optimism  is  prima  fade  noble-mindedness. 
Optimists  also  can  be  selfish  and  even  intolerable.  In 
fine,  then,  I  am  disposed  to  say,  as  a  matter  of  mere  his- 
torical judgment,  that  Schopenhauer's  nervous  burdens 
unquestionably  opened  his  eyes  to  the  particular  aspect  of 
life  which  he  found  so  tragic,  but  that  meanwhile  the  fact 
of  such  burdens  is  of  positively  no  service  to  us  in  form- 
ing our  estimate  of  the  ultimate  significance  of  our  philo- 
sopher's insight,  —  an  insight  which,  for  my  part,  I  find 
as  deep  as  it  was  pai*tial. 

The  Italian  psychologist  Lombroso,  in  his  well-known 


SCHOPENHAUER.  243 

work  on  the  relations  of  genius  and  insanity,  makes  use 
of  course  of  Schopenhauer  in  his  catalogue  of  pathological 
geniuses.  The  only  value  which  such  observations  have, 
in  the  present  chaotic  condition  of  our  knowledge  upon  the 
subject,  is  to  remind  us  that  we  cannot  dispose  of  a  man's 
intellectual  rank,  or  of  his  doctrine,  by  merely  observing 
that  he  was  weighted  with  morbid  tendencies  of  mind. 
Genius  has  often,  although  by  no  means  always,  a  back- 
ground of  a  pathological  sort ;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  nervously  burdened,  whether  geniuses  or  not,  actually 
do  a  great  part  of  the  world's  work  and  of  the  world's 
thinking,  and  may  be  all  the  wiser  by  reason  of  the  depth 
of  their  nervous  experiences.  Specially  interesting,  how- 
ever, in  Schopenhauer's  case,  is  the  relation  of  contrast 
between  the  peevishness  of  his  private  temper  and  the 
self-controlled  calm  and  clearness  of  his  literary  style. 
To  such  a  man  intellectual  wort  is  aTrtessecT  "relief  from 
the  storms  of  trivial  but  violent  emotion.  His  reflective 
thought  stands  off,  as  it  were,  on  one  side,  and  surveys 
with  a  melancholy  freedom  his  daily  life  of  care  and  of 
bondage.  His  thinking  rejoices  in  the  wondrous  craft 
whereby  it  has  outwitted  passion.  His  reflection,  there- 
fore, throughout,  is  a  negative  self-criticism,  a  sort  of 
reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  tempestuous  natural  man. 
It  does  not  embody  the  peevishness  of  this  natural  man, 
but  rather  scorns  the  vanity  of  his  unwisdom.  As  Scho- 
penhauer himself  says :  "  Since  all  grief,  because  it  is  a 
mortification,  a  call  to  resignation,  has  in  it  the  possi- 
bility of  rendering  one  holy,  therefore  it  is  that  great 
sorrow,  deep  pangs,  arouse  in  us  a  certain  reverence  for 
the  sufferer ;  but  the  sufferer  becomes  wholly  venerable 
only  when,  seeing  his  whole  life  as  one  chain  of  sorrow, 
he  yet  does  not  dwell  on  the  enchainment  of  circum- 
stances that  brought  grief  to  just  his  life ;  .  .  .  for  then 
he  would  still  be  longing  for  life,  only  under  other  condi- 
tions. But  he  is  truly  venerable  only  when  his  look  is 


244  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

turned  from  the  petty  to  the  universal ;  when  he  becomes, 
as  it  were,  a  genius  in  respect  of  ethical  insight ;  when 
he  sees  a  thousand  cases  in  one,  so  that  life  seen  as  one 
whole  .  .  .  moves  him  to  resignation.  ...  A  very  noble 
character,"  continues  Schopenhauer,  "  we  always  conceive 
with  a  certain  tinge  of  melancholy  in  it,  —  a  melancholy 
that  is  anything  but  a  continual  peevishness  in  view  of 
the  daily  vexations  of  life  (for  such  peevishness  is  an 
ignoble  trait,  and  arouses  suspicions  of  maliciousness), 
but  rather  a  melancholy  that  comes  from  an  insight  into 
the  vanity  of  all  joys,  and  the  sorrowfulness  of  all  living, 
not  alone  of  one's  own  fortune."  Thus,  as  we  see,  Scho- 
penhauer's philosophy  is  not  founded  upon  any  summing 
up  of  the  malicious  judgments  of  his  natural  peevishness, 
but  is  an  expression  of  a  calm  and  relatively  external 
survey  and  confession  of  his  temperament  in  its  whole- 
ness. This  it  is  that  is  expressed  in  the  lucidity  of  his 
style,  and  that  gives  permanent  value  to  his  insight.  Tha 
strong  opposition  between  will  and  contemplation  is  one 
of  the  chief  features  of  his  doctrine. 

As  for  this  style  in  itself,  it  suggested  Jean  Paul's 
famous  characterization  of  the  first  edition  of  Schopeiv 
hauer's  "Welt  als  Wille  und  Vorstellung  "  :  "A  book  o' 
philosophical  genius,  bold,  many-sided,  full  of  skill  and 
depth, —  but  of  a  depth  often  hopeless  and  bottomless, 
akin  to  that  melancholy  lake  in  Norway,  in  whose  deep 
waters,  beneath  the  steep  rock-walls,  one  never  sees  the 
sun,  but  only  the  stars  reflected  ;  and  no  bird  and  no  wave 
ever  flies  over  its  surface."  Just  this  calm  of  Schopen- 
hauer's intellect  is  the  characteristic  thing  about  his  writ- 
ing ;  and  no  one  who  knows  the  highly  intellectual  and 
reflective  type  of  the  nervously  burdened  genius  will  fail 
to  comprehend  the  meaning  of  the  contrast  between  the 
man's  peevishness,  which  tortured  him,  and  his  thinking, 
wherein  he  found  rest.  More  cheerful  spirits  may  think 
and  will  in  the  same  moment,  may  reflect  with  vigorous 


SCHOPKNHAUER.  245 

vitality  and  work  with  keen  reflection.  But  for  men  of 
Schopenhauer's  type  there  is  a  profound  contrast  between 
their  contemplative  and  their  passionate  life,  precisely  the 
same  contrast  that  the  ascetic  mystics,  with  whom,  once 
more,  like  Spinoza,  Schopenhauer  as  philosopher  had 
many  things  in  common,  have  always  loved  to  dwell  upon 
and  to  exaggerate.  Do  you  give  yourself  over  to  passion  ? 
Then,  as  they  will  have  it,  you  may  be  clever,  well  in- 
formed, ingenious ;  in  short,  as  all  the  ascetic  mystics 
would  say,  you  may  be  as  wily  as  you  are  worldly ;  but 
through  it  all  you  will  be  essentially  ignorant,  thought-  I 
less,  irrational.  Do  you  attain  the  true  enlightenment, 
even  for  a  moment  ?  Then  you  stand  aside  from  passion  ; 
its  whirlwind  goes  by,  and  you  remain  undisturbed ;  your 
thought,  to  use  an  old  comparison  that  was  a  favorite  of 
Schopenhauer's,  pierces  through  passion  flft  |ihft  fW^'g1** 
through  the  wind.  You  see  it  all,  but  it  moves  you  not. 

Such  mysticism  is  essentially  pessimistic ;  we  find  it  so 
even  in  Spinoza,  or  in  the  "  Imitation  of  Christ ;  "  only, 
in  the  "  Imitation,"  contemplation  has  the  glory  of  God 
to  turn  to  above  and  beyond  the  storm  of  sense  and  of 
vanity.  A  formula  for  Schopenhauer  is  that  his  pessi- 
mism is  simply  the  doctrine  of  the  "  Imitation  "  with  the 

_^^^^^^M"*"****M*MM"IIM'IM^^^MMttM^^AMIH^^^^^^^^^^^MMWMHMHMH'M''1*'^ 

glory  of  God  omitted ;  but  as  the  glory  of  God  in  the 
latter  book  is  described  in  purely  abstract,  mystical,  and 
essentially  unreal  terms,  one  may  see  at  once  that  the  road 
from  the  mediaeval  mystic  to  Schopenhauer's  outcome  is 
not  so  long  as  some  people  imagine.  "I  saw  in  my 
dream,"  says  Bunyan,  at  the  end  of  his  "  Pilgrim's  Pro- 
gress," when  the  angels  carry  off  poor  Ignorance  to  the 
pit,  —  "I  saw  in  my  dream  that  there  was  a  way  to 
the  bottomless  pit  from  the  very  gate  of  Heaven,  as  well 
as  from  the  City  of  Destruction."  Now,  Schopenhauer's 
mission  it  was  to  explore  this  highly  interesting  way  with 
considerable  speculative  skill.  The  mystic  who  forsakes 
the  world  because  of  its  vanity  finds  his  comfort  in  a 


246  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY". 

dream  of  something  called  the  divine  perfection,  —  some- 
thing pure,  abstract,  extra-mundane.  He  comes  on  "  that 
Avhich  is,"  and  catches,  like  Tennyson  in  the  famous 
night  vision  on  the  lawn,  in  the  "  In  Memoriarn,"  "  the 
deep  pulsation  of  the  world."  Only  by  and  by  morning 
comes.  Your  mystic  must  awake ;  his  vision  must  van- 
ish, "  stricken  through  with  doubt."  Tennyson  seems  to 
have  endured  the  waking  better  than  others.  But,  gener- 
ally speaking,  the  pessimist  of  Schopenhauer's  type  is. 
simply  the  mystic  of  the  type  of  the  "  Imitation,"  at  the 
moment  when  he  has  awakened  from  the  false  glory  of 
this  religious  intoxication.  , 

The  events  of  our  hero's  life  may  be  briefly  disposed  of. 
His  father  took  or  sent  him  on  long  travels  during  his 
early  youth,  made  him  well  acquainted  with  both  French 
and  English,  and  insisted  that  he  should  in  due  time 
learn  the  mercantile  business,  and  train  himself  to  be  a 
busy,  intelligent,  and  many-sided  man  of  the  world. 
Scholarship  and  the  university  formed  no  part  in  the 
father's  plans.  The  boy  spent  also  considerable  time  on 
his  father's  country  estate,  loved  nature,  but  was  always 
a  lonely  child.  As  youth  waxed,  moodiness  tormented 
him  ;  he  already  showed  also  the  metaphysical  turn.  His 
father's  death,  in  1805,  left  him  free  to  follow  his  own 
plans.  He  forsook  the  hated  counting-house,  where  he 
had  already  set  about  his  work,  and  began  to  study  for 
the  university ;  making  rapid  progress  in  Latin,  quarrel- 
ling with  his  elders,  and  writing  rhetorically  gloomy  let- 
ters to  his  mother,  who  had  now  entered  on  her  Weimar 
career.  The  son's  native  pessimism  was  still  far,  of 
course,  from  the  later  philosophical  formulation,  but  he 
already  perceived  that  one  great  evil  about  the  world  is 
its  endless  change,  which  dooms  all  ideal  interests  and 
moods  to  alteration  and  defeat.  "  Everything,"  he  writes 
to  his  mother,  "  is  washed  away  in  time's  stream.  The 
minutes,  the  numberless  atoms  of  pettiness  into  which 


SCHOPENHAUER.  217 

every  deed  is  dissolved,  are  the  worms  that  gnaw  at 
everything  great  and  noble,  to  destroy  it."  His  mother 
found  this  sort  of  thing  rather  tedious,  and  especially  in- 
consistent with  her  son's  social  success  as  an  occasional 
inmate  of  her  house  at  Weimar.  There  already  a  most 
brilliant  company  often  gathered,  Goethe  at  the  head.  A 
youth  of  twenty  or  thereabouts  could  not  add  grace  to 
such  a  scene  so  long  as  he  could  talk  of  nothing  but  time 
and  worms.  She  wrote  him  plainly,  being  a  woman  as 
clear-headed  as  she  was  charming :  "  When  you  get  older, 
dear  Arthur,  and  see  things  more  clearly,  perhaps  we 
shall  agree  better.  Till  then  let  us  see  that  our  thousand 
little  quarrels  shall  not  hunt  love  out  of  our  hearts.  To 
that  end  we  must  keep  well  apart.  You  have  your  lodg- 
ings ;  as  for  my  house,  whenever  you  come  you  are  a 
guest,  well  received,  of  course,  only  you  must  n't  interfere. 
I  can't  bear  objections.  Days  when  I  receive,  you  may 
take  supper  with  me,  if  you  '11  only  be  so  good  as  to  re- 
frain from  your  painful  disputations,  which  make  me 
angry,  too,  and  from  all  your  lamentations  over  the  stupid 
world  and  the  sorrows  of  mankind ;  for  all  that  always 
gives  me  a  bad  night  and  horrid  dreams,  and  I  do  so  like 
a  sound  sleep." 

In  1809,  Schopenhauer  began  his  university  studies  at 
Gottingen,  devoted  himself  to  Kant  and  Plato,  and  rap- 
idly acquired  the  type  of  erudition  which  he  kept  to  the 
end,  an  erudition  vast  rather  than  technical,  the  learning 
of  one  who  saw  swiftly  rather  than  studied  exhaustively, 
remembered  rather  than  systematized,  enjoyed  manifold 
labors  rather  than  professional  completeness.  He  was 
always  a  marvelous  reader,  of  wide  literary  sympathies, 
especially  fond  of  the  satirists,  the  mystics,  and  the  keen 
observers  of  all  ages.  For  the  processes  of  the  exact 
sciences  he  had  a  poor  comprehension ;  for  natural  phe- 
nomena of  a  suggestive  sort  his  eye  was  always  very  wide 
open ;  he  longed  to  catch  the  restless  World- Will  in  the 


248  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

very  act  of  its  struggle  and  sorrow.  He  loved  books 
of  ti'avel,  energetic  stories,  strongly  written  historical 
sketches,  tragic  as  well  as  satirical  dramas,  and  books  of 
well-described  natural  history.  In  nature  itself,  he  was 
verv  fond  of  observing  flowers,  while,  after  his  fashion, 
he  loved  animals  passionately.  They  show  the  will  naked, 
in  all  its  naive  cruelty,  guilt,  and  innocence. 

Edifying  literature  of  all  but  the  purely  mystical  type, 
most  systematic  schemes  of  constructive  thought,  all 
merely  sentimental  poetry,  and  above  all  such  moralizing 
poetry  as  Schiller's  "  Don  Carlos,"  he  in  general  bitterly 
despised.  These  things  seemed  to  him  to  hover  above 
life.  He  wanted  to  contemplate  the  longing  of  life  in 
itself.  His  critical  and  historical  judgments  are  deep  and 
yet  wayward.  He  is  once  more  on  the  lookout  for  types, 
not  for  connections  ;  he  had,  for  so  learned  a  man,  a  poor 
eye  for  detecting  unscholarly  and  fantastic  theories,  and. 
frequently  accepts  such  when  they  relate  to  topics  beyond 
his  immediate  control.  His  literary  sense  was  after  all 
his  best  safeguard  in  scholarship.  Here  his  fine  contem- 
plative intellect  guided  him.  He  could  not  make  a  bad 
blunder  as  to  a  purely  linguistic  question  ;  but  where  his 
taste  and  instinct  for  the  immediate  inner  life  of  things 
and  of  people  were  unable  to  guide  him,  he  wandered  too 
often  in  the  dark.  On  all  matters  of  learning  his  judg- 
ment remains,  therefore,  largely  that  of  the  sensitive  man 
of  the  world.  His  sense  of  humor  was  of  the  keenest. 
The  will  is  once  for  all  as  comic  in  its  irrationalities  as  it 
is  deep  in  its  unrest.  A  distinguishing  feature  of  his  style 
is  due  to  this  wide  reading,  namely,  his  skill  in  metaphor 
and  in  other  forms  of  comparison.  In  this  respect  he 
rivals  those  wonderful  masters  of  comparison,  the  Hindoo 
metaphysicians,  whom  he  knew  through  translations,  and 
admired  much.  One  further  trait  may  yet  be  mentioned 
as  pervading  his  study  and  his  whole  view  of  life.  He 
was  an  intense  admirer  of  the  English  temperament,  just 


SCHOPENHAUER.  249 

as  he  was  an  intense  hater  of  many  English  institutions. 
Not,  of  course,  the  English  Philistine,  but  the  English 
man  of  the  world,  attracted  him,  by  that  clear-headedness 
and  that  freedom  from  systematic  delusions  which  are  so 
characteristic  of  the  stock.  To  sum  all  up  in  a  word,  the 
maxim  of  his  whole  life  as  a  learner  was,  See  and  record 
the  vital  struggles  and  longings  of  the  will  wherever  they 
appear.  _ 

Such  scholarship  as  this  was  ill-fitted  to  prepare  Scho- 
penhauer for  an  academic  life.  In  1813,  he  printed  his 
dissertation  for  the  doctor's " degree,  on  the  "Fourfold 
Root  of  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason."  It  is  his 
most  technical  book,  with  least  of  his  genius  in  it.  In 
1818  was  published  the  first  edition  of  his  "Welt  als 
Wille  und  Vorstellung."  In  1820,  he  entered  on  his  work 
as  Privat-Docent  at  the  university  of  Berlin,  and  imme- 
diately made  a  sufficiently  complete  academic  failure  to 
discourage  him  from  any  serious  effort  to  continue.  Em- 
bittered by  the  indifference  with  which  both  his  books 
and  his  attempts  as  a  teacher  were  received,  he  gradually 
acquired  that  intense  hatred  of  all  professors  of  philoso- 
phy, and  of  the  whole  post-Kantian  speculative  movement 
in  Germany,  which  he  expressed  more  than  once  in  a 
furious  form,  and  which  wholly  misled  him  as  to  his  own 
historical  relations.  After  1831,  he  retired  to  Frankfort- 
on-the-Main,  and  lived  upon  his  little  fortune  until  the 
close  of  his  life.  How  he  came  slowly  to  be  publicly 
known,  in  spite  of  the  indifference  with  which  academic 
circles  treated  him ;  how  in  old  age  there  gathered  round 
him  a  little  circle  of  well-received  flatterers  ;  how  young 
Russians  used  to  come  and  stare  at  the  wise  man  ;  how  he 
loved  the  attentions  of  all  such  people,  and  better  still  the 
more  intelligent  understanding  of  two  or  three  faithful 
disciples,  but  best  of  all  his  dinner  and  his  dog ;  how  he 
died  at  last  suddenly,  when  he  was  quite  alone,  —  are  not 
all  these  things  written  in  the  books  of  modern  literary 


250  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

gossip  ?  I  need  not  dwell  upon  them  further ;  nor  need 
I  repeat  how  Schopenhauer  had  only  to  die  to  acquire 
general  fame,  until  now  his  name  is  everywhere  a  symbol 
for  all  that  is  most  dark  and  deep  and  sad  and  dangerous 
about  the  philosophy  of  our  time.  Of  the  pettier  inci- 
dents of  his  life,  of  his  quarrels,  of  his  one  or  two  out- 
bursts of  temper  which  led  to  public  scandals,  of  his  other 
eccentricities  numberless,  I  have  no  time  to  speak  further. 


Schopenhauer's  principal  work,  "Die  Welt  als  Wille 
und  Vorstellung,"  is  in  form  the  most  artistic  philosophi- 
cal treatise  in  existence,  if  one  excepts  the  best  of  Plato's 
"  Dialogues."  In  its  first  edition  it  was  divided  into  four 
books ;  a  later  edition  added  in  a  second  volume  com- 
ments upon  all  four.  Of  these  books,  the  first  summa- 
rizes the  Kantian  basis  of  Schopenhauer's  own  doctrine. 
The  world  is,  first  of  all,  for  each  and  for  all  of  us,  just 
our  Vorstellung,  our  Idea.  It  is  there  because  and  while 
we  see  it ;  it  consists  in  its  detail  of  facts  of  experience. 
These,  however,  are,  for  our  consciousness,  always  inter- 
preted facts,  seen  in  the  sense  forms  of  space  and  of  time, 
and  within  these  forms,  perceived  through  and  by  virtue 
of  our  universal  form  of  comprehension,  namely,  the  prin- 
ciple of  causation.  When  I  experience  anything,  I  in- 
evitably seek  for  a  cause  in  space  and  in  time  for  this 
experience.  When  I  find  such  a  cause,  I  localize  the 
experience  as  an  event  manifesting  some-  change  in  some- 
thing there  in  space  and  in  time;  but  these  forms  of 
space  and  of  time,  as  well  as  this  principle  of  causation, 
are  all  alike  simply  formal  ideas  in  me.  Kant's  great 
service  lay,  in  fact,  in  his  proving  the  subjectivity,  the 
purely  mental  nature,  of  such  forms.  The  space  and  time 
worlds,  with  all  that  they  contain,  exist  accordingly  for  the 
knowing  subject.  No  subject  without  an  object,  and  no 
object  without  a  subject.  I  know  in  so  far  as  there  is  a 


/ 

•' 


SCHOPENHAUER.  251 

world  to  know  ;  and  the  world  yonder  exists  in  so  far  as 
I  know  it.  In  vain,  moreover,  would  one  seek  for  any 
thing  in  itself  really  outside  of  ine  as  the  cause  of  my 
experiences.  For  cause  is  just  an  idea  of  mine,  useful 
and  valid  for  the  events  of  the  show  world,  but  wholly 
inapplicable  to  anything  else.  Within  experience  the  law 
of  causation  is  absolute,  because  such  is  my  fashion  of 
thinking  experience  and  of  perceiving  the  localized 
things  of  sense.  But  beyond  experience  what  validity, 
what  application,  can  one  give  to  the  principle  of  causa- 
tion ?  None.  There  is  no  cause  to  be  sought  beyond  my 
own  true  nature  for  my  own  experiences. 

But  what  is  this  my  nature  ?  The  second  book  answers 
the  question.  My  nature,  you  must  observe,  is  something 
very  wealthy.  It  does  not  indeed  cause  my  experiences,  in 
any  proper  sense  ;  for  cause  means  only  an  event  that  in 
time  or  in  space  brings  another  event  to  pass ;  and  there 
is  nothing  that,  in  time  or  in  space,  brings  to  pass  my  own 
deepest,  timeless,  and  spaceless  nature.  As  phenomenon 
in  time,  my  body  may  move  or  die,  as  other  events  deter- 
mine ;  but  my  deepest  nature  is  so  superior  to  space  and 
time  that,  as  we  have  just  shown,  space  and  time  are  in 
fact  in  me,  in  so  far  as  they  are  my  forms  of  seeing  and 
of  knowing.  Therefore  my  true  nature  neither  causes, 
nor  is  caused ;  but,  as  one  now  sees,  it  in  truth  is,  com- 
prises, embodies  itself  in,  all  my  world  of  phenomena. 
Hence  you  see  how  wealthy  my  true  nature  must  be  in  its 
implications.  Yes,  in  a  deeper  sense,  you  also,  in  so  far 
as  you  truly  exist,  must  have  the  same  deepest  nature 
that  I  have.  Only  in  space  and  in  time  do  we  seem  to  be 
separate  beings.  Space  and  time  form,  as  Schopenhauer 
says,  the  dividing  principle  of  things.  In  an  illusory 
way  they  seem  to  distinguish  us  all  from  one  another ; 
but  abstract  space  and  time,  with  all  their  manifold  and 
illusory  distinctions  of  places  and  moments,  and  the  real 
world  collapses  into  one  immanent  nature  of  things. 


252  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Since  my  own  deepest  nature  is  beneath  and  behind  the 
time  form  of  the  apparent  world,  it  follows  that,  in  an 
essential  and  deep  sense,  I  am  one  with  all  that  ever  has 
been  or  that  ever  will  be,  either  millions  of  ages  ago 
or  millions  of  ages  to  come.  And  as  for  space,  there  is 
no  star  so  remote  but  that  the  same  essential  nature  of 
things  which  is  manifest  in  that  star  is  also  manifest 
in  my  own  body.  Space  and  time  are,  as  the  Hindoos 
declared,  the  veil  of  Maya  or  Illusion,  wherewith  the  hid- 
den unity  of  things  is  covered,  so  that,  through  such  illu- 
sion, the  world  appears  manifold,  although  it  is  but  one. 

To  answer,  therefore,  the  question,  What  is  the  nature 
of  things?  I  have  only  to  find  what,  apart  from  my 
senses  and  my  thought,  is  my  own  deepest  essence.  And 
of  this  I  have  a  direct,  an  indescribable,  but  an  unques- 
tionable awareness.  My  whole  inner  life  is,  namely,  essen- 
tially my  will.  I  long,  I  desire,  I  move,  I  act,  I  feel,  I 
strive,  I  lament,  I  assert  myself.  The  common  name  for 
all  this  is  my  will.  By  will,  of  course,  Schopenhauer  does 
not  merely  mean  the  highest  form  of  my  conscious  choice, 
as  some  people  do.  He  means  simply  the  active  nature 
of  me,  the  wanting,  longing,  self-asserting  part.  This,  in 
truth,  as  even  the  romantic  idealists  felt,  lies  deeper  than 
my  intellect,  is  at  the  basis  of  all  my  seeing  and  knowing. 
Why  do  I  see  and  acknowledge  the  world  in  space  and 
in  time  ?  Why  do  I  believe  in  matter,  or  recognize  the 
existence  of  my  fellow-men,  or  exercise  my  reason  ?  Is 
not  all  this  just  my  actual  fashion  of  behavor  ?  In  vain, 
however,  do  I  seek,  as  the  idealists  of  Fichte's  type  often 
pretended  to  seek,  for  an  ultimate  reason  why  I  should 
have  this  fashion  of  behavior.  That  is  a  mere  fact. 
Deeper  than  reason  is  the  inexplicable  caprice  of  the 
inner  life.  We  want  to  exist ;  we  long  to  know ;  we 
make  our  world  because  we  are  just  striving  to  come  into 
being.  Our  whole  life  is  as  ultimate  and  inexplicable  an 
activity  as  are  our  particular  fashions  of  loving  and  oi 


SCHOPENHAUER.  253 

hating.  So  I  am ;  this  is  the  nature  of  me,  —  to  strive,  to 
long,  to  will ;  and  I  cannot  rest  in  this  striving.  My  life 
is  a  longing  to  be  somewhere  else  in  life  than  here,  where 
I  am. 

Here,  then,  is  the  solution  of  our  mystery  in  so  far  as 
it  can  have  a  solution.  The  world  is  the  "Will.  In  time 
and  space  I  see  only  the  behavior  of  phenomena.  I  never 
get  at  things  in  themselves ;  but  I,  in  my  timeless  and 
spaceless  inner  nature,  in  the  very  heart,  in  the  very  germ, 
of  my  being,  am  not  a  mere  outward  succession  of  phe- 
nomena. I  am  a  Will,  —  a  will  which  is  not  there  for  the 
sake  of  something  else,  but  which  exists  solely  because  it 
desires  to  exist.  Here  is  the  true  thing  in  itself.  The 
whole  world,  owing  to  the  utter  illusoriness  of  time  and 
space,  has  collapsed  into  one  single  and  ultimate  nature 
of  things.  This  nature,  immediately  experienced  in  the 
inner  life,  is  the  Will.  This  Will,  then,  is  that  which  is  so 
wealthy  that  the  whole  show  world  is  needed  to  express 
its  caprice.  Look,  then,  on  the  whole  world  in  its  infinite 
complication  of  living  creatures  and  of  material  processes. 
These,  indeed,  are  remote  enough  from  your  body.  Seen 
in  space 'and  time,  you  are  a  mere  fragment  in  the  endless 
world  of  phenomena,  a  mere  drop  in  the  ocean,  a  link  in 
an  endless  chain.  But  look  at  the  whole  world  otherwise. 
In  its  inmost  life  and  truth  it  must  be  one,  for  space  and 
time  are  the  mere  forms  in  which  the  one  interest  of  the 
observer  is  pleased  to  express  itself.  Look  upon  all 
things,  then,  and  it  can  be  said  of  you  as,  once  more,  the 
Hindoos  loved  to  say,  "  The  life  of  all  these  things,  — 
That  art  Thou" 

Schopenhauer  himself  was  fond  of  quoting  this  well- 
known  phrase  of  the  Hindoo  philosophy  as  expressing  the 
kernel  of  his  own  doctrine.  New  about  his  philosophy  was, 
he  felt,  the  synthesis  that  he  had  made  of  Kant's  thought 
and  the  Hindoo  insight ;  but  with  this  insight  itself  he 
essentially  agreed.  "The  inmost  life  of  things  is  one, 


254  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

and  that  life  art  thou"  This  sentence  expresses  to  hi« 
mind  the  substance  of  the  true  thought  about  the  world. 
Let  us,  then,  quote  a  paragraph  or  two  from  one  of  the 
Hindoo  philosophic  classics  called  the  "  Upanishads," 
much  read  and  loved  by  Schopenhauer,  to  illustrate  his 
view.  In  the  passage  in  question  a  teacher  is  repre- 
sented as  in  conversation  with  his  pupil,  who  is  also  his 
son.  "  *  Bring  me,'  says  the  father,  '  a  fruit  of  yonder 
tree.'  'Here  it  is,  O  Venerable  One.'  'Cut  it  open.' 
' It  is  done.'  '  What  seest  thou  therein ? '  'I  see,  O 
Venerable  One,  very  little  seeds.'  *  Cut  one  of  them 
open.'  '  It  is  done,  Venerable  One.'  '  What  seest  thou 
therein  ?  '  '  Nothing,  Venerable  One.'  Then  spake  he : 
'  That  fine  thing  which  thou  seest  not,  my  well  beloved, 
from  that  fine  tiling  (that  life)  is,  in  truth,  this  mighty 
tree  grown.  Believe  me,  my  well  beloved,  what  this  fine 
(substance)  is,  of  whose  essence  is  all  the  world,  that  is 
the  Keality,  that  is  the  Soul,  —  That  art  Thou>  O  Cve- 
taketu.' " 

"  *  This  bit  of  salt,  lay  it  in  the  (vessel  of)  water,  and 
come  again  to-morrow  to  me.'  This  did  he.  Then  spake 
(the  teacher) :  *  Bring  me  that  salt  which  yesterday  even 
thou  didst  lay  in  the  water.'  He  sought  it  and  found  it 
not,  for  it  was  melted.  'Taste  the  water  here.  How 
tastes  it?'  'Salt.'  'Taste  it  there.  How  tastes  it?' 
'Salt.'  'Leave  the  vessel  and  sit  at  my  feet.'  So  did 
he,  and  said,  '  (The  salt)  is  still  there.'  Then  spake  the 
teacher :  '  Verily,  so  seest  thou  the  truly  Existent  not  in 
bodies,  yet  is  it  truly  therein.  What  this  fine  substance 
is  of  whose  essence  is  all  the  world,  that  is  the  Reality, 
that  is  the  Soul,  —  That  art  Thou,  O  Cvetaketu.'  " 

'"Just  as,  O  my  well  beloved,  a  man  whom  they  have 
led  away  out  of  the  land  of  the  Gandharis  with  eyes  blind- 
folded, and  have  loosed  him  in  the  wilderness,  —  just  as 
he  wanders  eastwards  or  westwards,  southwards  or  north- 
wards, because  he  has  been  led  hither  blindfolded  and 


SCHOPENHAUER.  255 

loosed  blindfolded,  but  after  some  one  has  taken  off  the 
blind  from  his  eyes,  and  has  said,  "  Yonder  lies  the  land 
of  the  Gandharis ;  yonder  go,"  he,  asking  the  way  in  vil- 
lage after  village,  instructed  and  understanding,  comes 
home  at  last  to  the  Gandharis,  —  even  so,  too,  is  the  man 
who  here  in  the  world  has  found  a  teacher ;  for  he  knows 
"  to  this  (world)  I  belong  only  until  I  am  delivered ;  then 
shall  I  come  to  my  home."  What  this  fine  (substance) 
is,  of  whose  essence  is  all  the  world,  that  is  the  Reality, 
that  is  the  Soul, —  That  art  Thou,  O  Cvetaketu.'  " 

Here,  one  sees,  is  the  Hindoo  way  of  getting  at  the 
substance.  It  is  also  Schopenhauer's  way.  Look  for  the 
substance  within,  in  your  own  nature.  You  will  not  see 
it  without.  It  is  the  life  of  your  own  life,  the  soul  of 
your  own  soul.  When  you  find  it,  you  will  come  home 
from  the  confusing  world  of  sense-things  to  the  heart  and 
essence  of  the  world,  to  the  reality.  That  art  Thou. 

Since  for  Schopenhauer  this  soul  of  your  soul  is  the 
capricious  inner  will,  there  is  no  reason  to  speak  of  it  as 
God  or  as  Spirit ;  for  these  words  imply  rationality  and 
conscious  intelligence.  And  intelligence,  whose  presence 
in  the  world  is  merely  one  of  the  caprices  of  this  will  it- 
self, finds  itself  always  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  will,  which 
it  can  contemplate,  but  which  it  can  never  explain.  How- 
ever, of  contemplation  there  are  various  stages,  deter- 
mined in  us  phenomenal  individuals  by  the  various  sizes 
and  powers  of  our  purely  phenomenal  brains.  Why  any 
intelligence  exists  at  all,  and  why  it  is  phenomenally  as- 
sociated with  a  brain,  nobody  can  explain.  The  will  thus 
likes  to  express  itself.  That  is  the  whole  story.  How- 
ever, once  given  the  expression,  this  intelligence  reaches 
its  highest  perfection  in  that  power  to  contemplate  the 
whole  world  of  the  will  with  a  certain  supreme  and  lofty 
calm,  which,  combined  with  an  accurate  insight  into  the 
truth  of  the  will,  is  characteristic  of  the  temperament  of 
the  productive  artist.  Art  is,  namely,  the  embodiment  of 


256  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

the  essence  of  the  will  as  the  contemplative  intelligence 
sees  it.  And  to  art  Schopenhauer  devotes  his  third  book. 
The  will  has  certain  ultimate  fashions  of  expressing  itself, 
certain  stages  of  self-objectification,  as  Schopenhauer  calls 
them.  These,  in  so  far  as  contemplation  can  seize  them, 
are  the  ultimate  types,  the  Platonic  ideas,  of  things,  all 
endlessly  exemplified  in  space  and  time  by  individual  ob- 
jects, but,  as  types,  eternal,  time-transcending,  immortal. 
They  are  the  ultimate  embodiments  of  passion,  the  eternal 
forms  of  longing  that  exist  in  our  world.  Art  grasps 
these  types  and  exhibits  them.  Architecture,  for  in- 
stance, portrays  the  blind  nature-forces,  or  longings,  of 
weight  and  resistance.  Art  is,  then,  the  universal  appre- 
ciation of  the  essence  of  the  will  from  the  point  of  view 
of  a  contemplative  onlooker.  Art  is,  therefore,  disinter- 
ested, embodying  passion,  but  itself  not  the  victim  of  pas- 
sion. Of  all  the  arts,  according  to  Schopenhauer,  Music 
most  universally  and  many-sidedly  portrays  the  very  es- 
sence of  the  will,  the  very  soul  of  passion,  the  very  heart 
of  this  capricious,  world-making,  and  incomprehensible 
inner  nature  of  ours.  Hence  music  is  in  some  respects 
Schopenhauer's  favorite  art.  Music  shows  us  just  what 
the  will  is,  —  eternally  moving,  striving,  changing,  flying, 
struggling,  wandering,  returning  to  itself,  and  then  begin- 
ning afresh,  —  all  with  no  deeper  purpose  than  just  life 
in  all  its  endlessness,  motion,  onward-flying,  conflict,  full- 
ness of  power,  even  though  that  shall  mean  fullness  of 
sorrow  and  anguish.  Music  never  rests,  never  is  content ; 
repeats  its  conflicts  and  wanderings  over  and  over ;  leads 
them  up,  indeed,  to  mighty  climaxes,  but  is  great  and 
strong  never  by  virtue  of  abstract  ideas,  but  only  by  the 
might  of  the  will  that  it  embodies.  Listen  to  these  cries 
and  strivings,  to  this  infinite  wealth  of  flowing  passion, 
to  this  infinite  restlessness,  and  then  reflect,  —  That  art 
Tliou;  just  that  unreposing  vigor,  longing,  majesty,  and— 
caprice. 


SCHOPENHAUER.  257 

Of  all  Schopenhauer's  theories,  except  his  pessimism 
itself,  this  theory  of  art  has  become  the  most  widely  known 
and  influential.  As  he  stated  it,  it  was,  indeed,  evidently 
the  notion,  not  of  the  systematic  student  of  any  art,  but 
of  the  observant  amateur  of  genius  and  sensibility.  It 
lacks  the  professional  tone  altogether.  Its  illustrations 
are  chosen  whimsically  from  all  sorts  of  directions.  The 
opposition  between  will  and  contemplation  reaches  for  the 
first  time  its  height  at  this  point  in  the  system.  On  one 
side,  the  world  of  passion,  throbbing,  sorrowing,  longing, 
hoping,  toiling,  above  all,  forever  fleeing  from  the  mo- 
ment, whatever  it  be ;  on  the  other  side,  the  majesty  of 
artistic  contemplation,  looking  in  sacred  calm  upon  all 
this  world,  seeing  all  things,  but  itself  unmoved.  Plainly, 
in  this  contemplative  intellect  the  will  has  capriciously 
created  for  itself  a  dangerous  enemy,  who  will  discover  its 
deep  irrationality. 

This  enemy  is  none  other  than  that  Wagnerian  Briin- 
l-.ilde,  who  is  destined  to  see,  through  and  through,  the 
vanity  of  the  world  of  the  will,  and  who,  not  indeed  with- 
out the  connivance  of  the  high  gods  of  the  will  them- 
selves, is  minded  to  destroy  the  whole  vain  show  in  one  final 
act  of  resignation.  There  arise  from  time  to  time  in  the 
world,  thinks  Schopenhauer,  holy  men,  full  of  sympathy 
and  pity  for  all  their  kind,  full  of  a  sense  of  the  unity  of 
all  life,  and  of  the  vanity  of  this  our  common  and  endless 
paradox  of  the  finite  world.  These  men  are  called,  in  the 
speech  of  all  the  religions,  saints.  Whatever  their  land 
or  creed,  their  thought  is  the  same.  Not  the  particular 
griefs  of  life,  not  the  pangs  of  cold  and  hunger  and  of 
disease,  not  the  horrors  of  the  baseness  that  runs  riot  in 
humanity,  —  not  these  things  do  they  weigh  in  the  balance 
with  any  sort  of  precision  or  particularity,  although  these 
things,  too,  they  see  and  pity.  No,  the  source  of  all  these 
griefs,  the  will  itself,  its  paradox,  its  contradictory  long- 
ing to  be  forever  longing,  its  irrational  striving  to  be  foi> 


258  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

ever  as  one  that  suffers  lack,  —  this  they  condemn,  con> 
passionate,  and  —  resign.  They  do  not  strive  or  cry. 
They  simply  forsake  the  will.  Life,  they  say,  must  be 
evil,  for  life  is  desire,  and  desire  is  essentially  tragic,  since 
it  flees  endlessly  and  restlessly  from  all  that  it  has ;  makes 
perfection  impossible  by  always  despising  whatever  it  hap- 
pens to  possess,  and  by  longing  for  more ;  lives  in  an  eter- 
nal wilderness  of  its  own  creation  ;  is  tossed  fitfully  in 
the  waves  of  its  own  dark  ocean  of  passion ;  knows  no 
peace ;  finds  in  itself  no  outcome,  —  nothing  that  can 
finish  the  longing  and  the  strife. 

And  this  hopelessly  struggling  desire,  —  so  the  saints 
teach  to  each  one  of  us  in  our  blindness,  —  That  art  Thou. 
The  saints  pity  us  all.  Their  very  existence  is  compas- 
sion. They  absent  them  from  felicity  awhile,  that  they 
may  teach  us  the  way  of  peace.  And  this  way  is  what  ? 
Suicide  ?  No,  indeed.  Schopenhauer  quite  consistently 
condemns  suicide.  The  suicide  desires  bliss,  and  flees  only 
from  circumstance.  He  wills  life.  He  hates  only  this 
life  which  he  happens  to  have.  No,  this  is  not  what  the 
saints  teach.  One  and  all  they  counsel,  as  the  path  of 
perfection,  the  hard  and  steep  road  of  Resignation.  That 
alone  leads  to  blessedness,  to  escape  from  the  world. 
Deny  the  will  to  live.  Forsake  the  power  that  builds  the 
world.  Deny  the  flesh.  While  you  live  be  pitiful,  mer- 
ciful, kindly,  dispassionate,  resisting  no  evil,  turning  away 
from  all  good  fortune,  thinking  of  all  things  as  of  vanity 
and  illusion.  The  whole  world,  after  all,  is  an  evil  dream. 
Deny  the  will  that  dreams,  and  the  vision  is  ended,  ^s 
for  the  result,  "  we  confess  freely,"  says  Schopenhauer, 
in  the  famous  concluding  words  of  the  fourth  book  of 
his  first  volume,  "  what  remains,  after  the  entire  annul- 
ling of  the  will,  is,  for  all  those  who  are  yet  full  of  the 
will,  indeed  nothing.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  for  those 
in  whom  the  will  has  turned  again,  and  has  denied  itself, 
this  our  own  so  very  real  world,  with  all  her  suns  and 
Milky  Ways,  is  —Nothing." 


SCHOPENHAUER.  259 

V. 

The  estimate  of  the  doctrine  which  we  now  have  before 
us  will  be  greatly  aided  if  we  bear  in  mind  the  nature 
of  its  historic  genesis.  The  problem  bequeathed  by  Kant 
to  his  successors  was,  as  we  have  seen  throughout  both 
this  and  the  preceding  discussion,  the  problem  of  the  re- 
lation of  the  empirical  self  of  each  moment  to  the  total 
or  universal  self.  This  problem  exists  alike  for  Hegel 
and  for  Schopenhauer.  Hegel  undertakes  to  solve  it  by 
examining  the  process  of  self-consciousness.  This  pro- 
cess, developed  according  to  his  peculiar  and  paradoxical 
logic,  which  we  have  ventured  to  call  the  Logic  of  Pas- 
sion, shows  him  that  in  the  last  analysis  there  is  and  can 
be  but  one  self,  the  absolute  spirit,  the  triumphant  solver 
of  paradoxes.  Sure  of  his  process,  Hegel  despises  every 
such  mystical  and  immediate  seizing  of  the  Universal  as 
had  been  characteristic  of  the  romanticists.  With  just 
these  romanticists,  however,  Schopenhauer  has  in  common 
the  immediate  intuition  whereby  he  seizes,  not  so  much 
the  universal  self  as,  in  his  opinion,  the  universal  and 
irrational  essence  or  nature  that  is  at  the  heart  of  each 
finite  self,  and  of  all  things,  namely,  the  Will.  Yet  when  _ 
he  describes  this  will,  after  his  intuition  has  come  to 
grasp  it,  he  finds  in  it  just  the  paradox  that  Hegel  had 
logically  developed.  For  Hegel,  self-consciousness  is,  as 
even  Fichte  already  had  taught,  essentially  the  longing  to 
be  more  of  a  self  than  you  are.  Just  so,  for  Schopen- 
hauer, if  you  exist  you  will,  and  if  you  will  you  are  striv- 
ing to  escape  from  your  present  nature.  It  is  of  the  es- 
sence of  will  to  be  always  desiring  a  change.  If  the  Will 
makes  a  world,  the  Will  as  such  will  be  sure,  then,  thinks 
Schopenhauer,  to  be  endlessly  dissatisfied  with  its  world. 
For,  once  more,  when  you  will,  the  very  essence  of  such 
will  is  discontentment  with  what  is  yours  now.  I  no 
longer  make  that  an  object  of  desire  which  I  already 


260  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

possess.  I  will  what  I  have  not  yet,  but  hope  to  get,  as 
a  poor  man  wills  wealth,  but  a  rich  man  more  wealth.  I 
will  the  future,  the  distant,  the  unpossessed,  the  victory 
that  I  have  not  yet  won,  the  defeat  of  the  enemy  who  still 
faces  me  in  arms,  the  cessation  of  the  tedium  or  of  the 
pain  that  besets  me.  Do  I  attain  my  desire,  my  will 
ceases,  or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  turns  elsewhere  for 
food.  Curiously  enough,  this,  which  is  precisely  the 
thought  that  led  Hegel  to  the  conception  of  the  absolutely 
active  and  triumphant  spirit,  appears  to  Schopenhauer 
the  proof  of  the  totally  evil  nature  of  things.  Striving 
might  be  bearable  were  there  a  highest  good,  to  which,  by 
willing,  I  could  attain,  and  if,  when  I  once  attained  that 
good,  I  could  rest.  But  if  will  makes  the  world  and  is 
the  whole  life  aud  essence  of  it,  then  there  is  nothing  in 
the  world  deeper  than  the  longing,  the  unrest,  which  is  the 
very  heart  of  all  willing.  Does  n't  this  unrest  seem  tragic  ? 
Is  there  to  be  no  end  of  longing  in  the  world?  If  not, 
how  can  mere  striving,  meee  willing,  come  to  seem  beara- 
ble ?  Here  is  the  question  which  leads  Schopenhauer  to 
his  pessimism.  Precisely  the  same  problem  made  Hegel, 
with  all  his  appreciation  of  the  tragedy  of  life,  an  optimist. 
Hegel's  Absolute,  namely,  is  dissatisfied  everywhere  in  his 
finite  world,  but  is  triumphantly  content  with  the  whole  of 
it,  just  because  his  wealth  is  complete. 

An  historical  lecture  like  the  present  one  has  not  to  de- 
cide between  the  metaphysical  claims  and  rights  of  the 
Schopenhauerian  immediate  intuition  of  the  Universal 
and  the  Hegelian  logic.  As  theories  of  the  absolute, 
these  two  doctrines  represent  conflicting  philosophical  in- 
terests whose  discussion  would  belong  elsewhere.  Our 
present  concern  is  the  more  directly  human  one.  Of  the 
two  attitudes  towards  the  great  spiritual  interests  of  man 
which  these  systems  embody,  which  is  the  deeper?  To 
be  sure,  even  this  question  cannot  be  answered  without 
making  a  confession  of  philosophical  faith,  but  that  I 
must  here  do  in  merely  dogmatic  form. 


SCHOPENHAUER.  261 

For  my  part,  I  deeply  respect  both  doctrines.  Both 
are  essentially  modern  views  of  life,  modern  in  their  uni- 
versality of  expression,  in  their  keen  diagnosis  of  human 
nature,  in  their  merciless  criticism  of  our  consciousness, 
in  their  thorough  familiarity  with  the  waywardness  of 
the  inner  life.  The  century  of  nerves  and  of  spiritual 
sorrows  has  philosophized  with  characteristic  ingenuity  in 
the  persons  of  these  thinkers,  —  the  one  the  inexorable 
and  fairly  Mephistophelian  critic  of  the  paradoxes  of 
passion,  the  other  the  nervous  invalid  of  brilliant  insight. 
We  are  here  speaking  only  of  this  one  side  of  their  doc- 
trines, namely,  their  diagnosis  of  the  heart  and  of  the 
issues  of  life.  How  much  of  the  truth  there  is  in  both, 
every  knowing  man  ought  to  see.  Capricious  is  the  will 
of  man,  thinks  Schopenhauer,  and  therefore  endlessly 
paradoxical  and  irrational.  Paradoxical  is  the  very  con- 
sciousness, and  therefore  the  very  reason,  of  man,  finds 
Hegel ;  and  therefore,  where  there  is  this  paradox,  there 
is  not  unreason,  but  the  manifestation  of  a  part  of  the 
true  spiritual  life,  —  a  life  which  could  not  be  spiritua1 
were  it  not  full  of  conflict.  Hegel  thus  absorbs,  as  it 
were,  the  pessimism  of  Schopenhauer ;  while  Schopen- 
hauer illustrates  the  paradox  of  Hegel. 

But  if  both  doctrines  stand  as  significant  expressions 
of  the  modern  spirit,  a  glance  at  our  more  recent  litera- 
ture —  at  the  despairing  resignation  of  Tolstoi,  with  its 
flavor  of  mysticism,  and  at  the  triumphant  joy  in  the  para- 
doxes of  passion  which  Browning  kept  to  the  end  — 
will  show  us  how  far  our  romancers  and  poets  still  are 
from  having  made  an  end  of  the  inquiry  as  to  which  doc- 
trine is  the  right  one.  My  own  notion  about  the  matter, 
such  as  it  is,  would  indeed  need  for  its  full  development 
the  context  of  just  such  a  philosophical  argument  as  I 
have  declined  to  introduce  at  the  present  stage  of  this 
course.  As  constructive  idealist,  regarding  the  absolute 
as  indeed  a  spirit,  I  am  in  sympathy  with  Hegel's  sense 


262  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

of  the  triumphant  rationality  that  reigns  above  all  the 
conflicts  of  the  spiritual  world.  But  as  to  Schopenhauer's 
own  account  of  life,  I  find  indeed  that  his  pessimism  is 
usually  wholly  misunderstood  and  unappreciated,  as  well 
by  those  who  pretend  to  accept  as  well  by  those  who  con- 
demn it.  What  people  fail  to  comprehend  concerning 
these  deep  and  partial  insights  which  are  so  characteristic 
of  great  philosophers  is  that  the  proper  way  to  treat  them 
is  neither  to  scorn  nor  to  bow  down,  but  to  experience, 
and  then  to  get  our  freedom  in  presence  of  all  such  in- 
sights even  by  the  very  wealth  of  our  experience.  We 
are  often  so  slavish  in  our  relations  with  doctrines  of  this 
kind !  Are  they  expressed  in  traditional,  in  essentially 
clerical  language,  as  in  the  "  Imitation  "  or  in  some  other 
devotional  book,  then  the  form  deceives  us  often  into  ac- 
cepting mystical  resignation  as  if  it  were  the  whole  of 
spirituality,  instead  of  bearing,  as  it  does  bear,  much  the 
same  relation  to  the  better  life  that  sculptured  marble 
bears  to  breathing  flesh.  But  if  it  is  a  Schopenhauer,  a 
notorious  heretic,  who  uses  much  the  same  speech,  then 
we  can  find  no  refuge  save  in  hating  him  and  his  gloom. 
In  fact,  pessimism,  in  its  deeper  sense,  is  merely  an  ideal 
and  abstract  expression  of  one  very  deep  and  sacred  ele- 
ment of  the  total  religious  consciousness  of  humanity. 
In  fact,  finite  life  is  tragic,  very  nearly  as  much  so  as 
Schopenhauer  represented,  and  tragic  for  the  very  reason 
that  Schopenhauer  and  all  the  counselors  of  resignation 
are  never  weary  of  expressing,  in  so  far,  namely,  as  it  is  at 
once  deep  and  restless.  This  is  its  paradox,  that  it  is 
always  unfinished,  that  it  never  attains,  that  it  throbs  as 
the  heart  does,  and  ends  one  pulsation  only  to  begin  an- 
other. This  is  what  Hegel  saw.  This  is  what  all  the 
great  poets  depict,  from  Homer's  wanderings  of  the  much 
tossed  and  tried  Odysseus  down  to  "  In  Memoriam  "  of 
Tennyson,  or  the  "  Dramatic  Lyrics  "  of  Browning.  Not 
only  is  this  so,  but  it  must  be  so.  The  only  refuge  from 


SCHOPENHAUER.  263 

spiritual  restlessness  is  spiritual  sluggishness  ;  and  that,  as 
everybody  is  aware,  is  as  tedious  a  thing  as  it  is  insipid. 
For  the  individual  the  lesson  of  this  tragedy  is  always 
hard ;  and  he  learns  it  first  in  a  religious  form  in  the 
mood  of  pure  resignation.  "  I  cannot  be  happy ;  I  must 
resign  happiness."  This  is  what  all  the  Imitations  and  the 
Schopenhauers  are  forever  and  very  justly  teaching  to  the 
individual.  Schopenhauer's  special  reason  for  this  view 
is,  however,  the  deep  and  philosophical  one  that  at  the 
heart  of  the  world  there  seems  to  be  an  element  of  ca- 
pricious conflict.  That  fact  was  what  drove  him  to  reject 
the  World  Spirit  of  the  constructive  idealists,  and  to  speak 
only  of  a  World- Will.  But  is  this  the  whole  story  ?  No ; 
if  we  ever  get  our  spiritual  freedom,  we  shall,  I  think, 
not  neglecting  this  caprice  which  Schopenhauer  found 
at  the  heart  of  things,  still  see  that  the  world  is  divine 
and  spiritual,  not  so  much  in  spite  of  this  capriciousness, 
as  just  because  of  it.  Caprice  is  n't  all  of  reason ;  but 
reason  needs  facts  and  passions  to  conquer  and  to  ration- 
alize, in  order  to  become  triumphantly  rational.  The 
spirit  exists  by  accepting  and  by  triumphing  over  the 
tragedy  of  the  world.  Restlessness,  longing,  grief,  — 
these  are  evils,  fatal  evils,  and  they  are  everywhere  in  the 
world ;  but  the  spirit  must  be  strong  enough  to  endure 
them.  In  this  strength  is  the  solution.  And,  after  all, 
it  is  just  endurance  that  is  the  essence  of  spirituality. 
Resignation,  then,  is  indeed  part  of  the  truth,  —  resigna- 
tion, that  is,  of  any  hope  of  a  final  and  private  happiness. 
We  resign  in  order  to  be  ready  to  endure.  But  courage 
is  the  rest  of  the  truth,  —  a  hearty  defiance  of  the  whole 
hateful  pang  and  agony  of  the  will,  a  binding  of  the 
strong  man  by  being  stronger  than  he,  a  making  of  life 
once  for  all  our  divine  game,  where  the  passions  are  the 
mere  chessmen  that  we  move  in  carrying  out  our  plan, 
and  where  the  plan  is  a  spiritual  victory  over  Satan.  Let 
us  thank  Schopenhauer,  then,  for  at  least  this,  that  in  his 


264  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

pessimism  he  gives  us  an  universal  expression  for  the 
whole  negative  side  of  life.  If  you  will  let  me  speak  of 
private  experience,  I  myself  have  often  found  it  deeply 
comforting,  in  the  most  bitter  moments,  to  have  dis- 
counted, so  to  speak,  all  the  petty  tragedies  of  experience, 
all  my  own  weakness  and  caprice  and  foolishness  and 
ill  fortune,  by  one  such  absolute  formula  for  evil  as  Scho- 
penhauer's doctrine  gives  me.  It  is  the  fate  of  life  to 
be  restless,  capricious,  and  therefore  tragic.  Happiness 
comes,  indeed,  but  by  all  sorts  of  accidents  ;  and  it  flies  as 
it  comes.  One  thing  only  that  is  greater  than  this  fate 
endures  in  us  if  we  are  wise  of  heart ;  and  this  one  thing 
endures  forever  in  the  heart  of  the  great  World-Spirit  of 
whose  wisdom  ours  is  but  a  fragmentary  reflection.  This 
one  thing,  as  I  hold,  is  the  eternal  resolution  that  if  the 
world  will  be  tragic,  it  shall  still,  in  Satan's  despite,  be 
spiritual.  And  this  resolution  is,  I  think,  the  very  essence 
of  the  Spirit's  own  eternal  joy. 


LECTURE  IX. 

THE  RISE  OP  THE  DOCTRINE  OF   EVOLUTION. 

IDEALISM,  in  several  of  its  most  significant  phases,  has 
been  described  in  the  lectures  on  the  movement  from 
Kant  to  Hegel.  In  this  lecture  I  have  to  discuss  another 
phase  of  what  I  have  several  times  called  the  return  to 
the  outer  order.  In  looking  back  for  a  moment  at  certain 
of  the  suggestions  of  the  last  lecture,  I  shall  not  ask  you 
to  dwell  any  more  upon  Schopenhauer's  pessimism.  Of 
that  topic  we  have  had  doubtless  enough  for  the  present. 
Coming  as  we  do  to  a  more  cheerful  chapter  of  modern 
philosophy,  we  want  only  to  remind  ourselves,  at  the  out- 
set, of  another  element  in  Schopenhauer's  thought,  and 
one  which  will  be  of  importance  for  the  work  that  we  now 
have  in  hand. 

Schopenhauer,  as  you  may  remember,  while  he  was  in 
his  own  way  an  idealist  on  a  Kantian  basis,  was  not,  on 
the  whole,  what  one  would  call,  somewhat  technically,  a 
constructive  idealist.  That  is,  while  he  was  very  positive 
in  saying  that  the  world  which  we  see  and  feel  is  just  the 
world  of  our  id§as,  and  nothing  else,  he  did  not  follow  out 
the  plan  of  Fichte  or  of  the  romanticists  by  trying  to  show 
constructively  what  sort  of  a  world  we  are  all  rationally 
bound  to  see.  On  the  contrary,  as  Schopenhauer  holds, 
the  world  that  we  see  is  at  once  the  world  of  the  self,  of 
the  inner  life,  and  is  also  the  world  of  that  capricious 
will  which  is  the  very  heart  of  the  inner  life.  You  can- 
not deduce  a  priori  anything  about  the  sorts  of  reality 
which  this  world  must  express  and  contain.  You  cannot 
Bay,  with  Fichte,  that  it  must  be  the  world  of  the  moral 


266  THE   SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

law,  das  versinnlichte  Material  unserer  Pflicht.  You 
cannot  say,  with  Schelling,  that  it  must  be  the  world 
which  expresses  in  symbolic  form  the  life  of  a  rational 
and  gigantic  World-Spirit.  You  must  take  the  world  as 
you  find  it.  You  may  be  sure  indeed  of  its  unity,  yet 
this  assurance  rests  only  upon  your  power  to  prove  that 
all  diversity  is  due  to  our  sense-forms  of  time  and  space, 
and  is  therefore  illusory.  But  the  longing  and  struggling 
will  cannot  be  described  apart  from  experience.  The 
philosopher  must  become  a  naturalist.  He  must  look 
upon  the  world  as  the  spectator  looks  on  during  a  tragedy 
which  he  knows  beforehand  to  be  full  of  action  and  of 
suffering,  but  which  he  must  watch  before  he  can  know 
the  plot. 

It  is  this  thought  of  Schopenhauer's  that  brings  him 
very  near  to  the  position  of  most  students  of  modern  sci- 
ence. Schopenhauer  marks  then,  in  the  history  of 
thought,  the  transition  from  the  romantic  idealism  to  the 
modern  realism,  the  return  to  the  natural  order.  He  is 
indeed  an  idealist  of  a  Kantian  type.  He  is  philosopher 
in  his  sense  of  the  unity  of  things,  in  his  assurance  that 
all  phenomenal  plurality  is  a  mere  illusion,  in  his  reitera- 
tion of  the  Hindoo  That  art  Thou,  and  in  his  Kantian 
idealism  itself.  But  as  to  the  individual  facts  of  the 
world,  he  is  proud  to  be  a  naturalist,  who  studies  men 
and  beasts  and  art  and  flowers,  merely  to  find  out  what 
the  Will  is  doing. 

I. 

What  I  now  want  you  to  feel  is  that  all  this  was  in  so 
far  a  natural  and  a  healthy  turn  for  the  idealistic  philo- 
sophy to  take.  Philosophy  had  begun,  in  modern  times, 
with  the  external  order  and  with  dogmatic  assertions 
about  it.  Growing  doubtful  and  self-critical,  it  had  next 
fallen  to  scrutinizing  the  inner  life.  Becoming  bold  and 
clear  as  to  both  its  powers  and  its  limitations  it  had  later 
said,  with  Kant :  "  Things  in  themselves,  indeed,  are  n't 


THE   RISE   OF   THE  DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION.          26"i 

for  me  ;  but  as  for  the  order  and  unity  of  phenomena} 
nature,  that  is  mine,  and  is  even  of  my  own  creating." 
Waxing,  however,  afresh,  still  bolder,  thought  had  next 
asserted :  "  Not.  only  the  order  of  nature,  but  the  very 
content  of  nature  is  spiritual,  and  is  even  the  creation  of 
the  very  spirit  whom  my  life  embodies  in  finite  form." 
"  I  therefore,"  it  continued,  "  have  a  right  to  seize  hold 
upon  and  to  master  the  very  deepest  mysteries  of  this 
whole  spiritual  creation.  There  shall  be  no  limits  to  my 
ventures,  and  no  things  in  themselves  shall  stand  between 
me  and  the  rational  construction  of  reality  at  which  I 
aim."  But  here,  indeed,  the  idealist  had  been  doomed  to 
fresh  disappointment.  That  the  world  is  the  world  of  the 
absolute  spirit  he  could  make  indeed  plausible,  —  how 
plausible  we  ourselves  have  hardly  had  time  in  our  brief 
survey  to  see.  That,  deeper  than  your  conscious  nature 
or  than  mine,  there  is  a  truth  at  the  heart  of  the  inner 
life  of  which  we  as  finite  spirits  are  embodiments,  all  this 
the  idealist  could  try  to  explain  by  showing  how  the  com- 
munity of  our  sense-worlds,  our  own  human  power  to  act 
in  practical  and  rational  concert,  and  all  the  other  presup- 
positions  of  our  spiritual  existence,  lead  us  to  postulate 
that  the  whole  environment  of  our  inner  life  is  spiritual, 
that  there  is  but  one  self,  and  that  this  self  is  God.  But, 
after  all,  even  granting  the  force  of  these  considerations, 
one  difficulty  remained  which  the  idealists  could  not  con- 
quer. Whatever  your  formula  for  the  postulated  spiritual 
world,  whether  it  were  Fichte's  moral  law  or  the  various 
wayward  theories  of  the  romanticists,  an  element  of  stub- 
born caprice  remained.  From  the  constructions  of  your 
ideal  philosophy  to  the  empirical  facts  of  outer  nature 
remained  a  long  and  hopelessly  tangled  way.  The  world 
might  be  thus  rational,  but  it  was  evident  that  the  abso- 
lute spirit  must  be  thinking  of  many  things  that  you,  in 
your  finite  weakness,  could  not  well  presume  to  construct 
a  priori- 


268  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

In  view  of  all  this,  thought,  as  we  now  see,  must  be 
content  to  take  one  more  step,  not,  as  many  superficial 
students  of  modern  thought  have  supposed,  the  step  of 
repeating  once  for  all  of  the  whole  undertaking  of  the 
idealistic  period,  but  rather  the  step  of  returning,  enriched 
by  the  experience  and  the  depth  of  insight  which  this 
period  had  produced,  to  the  cautious  scrutiny  and  rational 
interpretation  of  the  external  order  itself.  The  first 
charge  of  idealism  upon  the  fortress  of  the  spiritual  mys- 
teries of  the  world  was  indeed  in  one  sense  a  failure. 
Constructive  idealism  meant,  as  the  romanticists  showed, 
no  small  danger  of  arbitrary  speculative  guesses,  of  way- 
wardness, and  of  dreaming.  If  Hegel  sought  to  put  an 
end  to  all  this  capriciousness  by  his  marvelously  skillful 
construction  of  the  essence  of  the  absolute  spirit  in  terms 
of  a  formula  derived  from  the  study  of  the  inner  life,  still, 
as  we  saw,  this  formula  also  was  quite  inadequate  to  the 
expression  of  the  facts  of  outer  nature.  Hegel  made  a 
skillful  diagnosis  of  the  logic  of  passion.  He  pointed  out 
how  spirituality  means  conflict.  He  tried  to  show  how 
this  conflict  proceeds  from  lower  to  higher  stages,  and 
how,  in  its  evolution,  all  the  forms  of  spirituality  which 
human  civilization  in  its  growth  exemplifies  are  necessa- 
rily produced.  In  this  way  Hegel  built  up,  after  his  own 
fashion,  an  inadequate  but  profoundly  suggestive  philoso- 
phy of  history,  as  well  as  a  sort  of  rational  construction  of 
the  whole  content  of  human,  social,  and  political  life.  In 
other  words,  Hegel  tried  to  show  how,  on  a  Kantian  basis, 
the  world  of  human  passion  can  be  explained,  and  how 
we  can  escape  from  what  we  called  the  prison  of  the  inner 
life,  and  prove  ourselves  to  be  in  the  world  of  the  infinite 
spirit.  Every  step  of  Hegel's  investigation  was  indeed 
open  to  some  question,  but  in  his  own  proper  field  he 
discovered  what  might  be  said  to  offer  very  high  hopes  to 
the  rational  idealist.  But  not  even  Hegel  could  really  get 
into  the  charmed  circle  of  the  empirical  sciences,  and  con* 


THE  RISE   OF   THE  DOCTRINE  OF   EVOLUTION.          269 

struct  the  facts  of  nature  upon  the  postulates  of  idealism. 
He  attempted  this  after  a  certain  limited  fashion,  as 
Schelling  had  attempted  it ;  but  he  failed.  Both  his  pre- 
tensions in  th?s  regard  and  the  nature  of  his  failure  have 
indeed  been  distorted  and  misrepresented  by  unjust  oppo- 
nents ;  but  in  any  case  there  remains  the  fact  that,  as  I 
just  said,  the  first  onslaught  of  idealism  upon  the  central 
mysteries  of  reality  failed;  and  it  became  necessary  to 
consider  what  next  to  do. 

How  simple,  then,  under  these  circumstances,  for  ideal- 
ists, or  for  men  who  had  been  trained  in  the  idealistic 
school,  but  who  saw  this  incompleteness  of  constructive 
idealism,  —  how  simple  for  them  now  to  say  :  "  That  the 
world  is  spiritual,  that  the  inner  life  is  in  fact  at  the  heart 
of  it,  seems,  after  Kant,  clear.  But  equally  clear  it  is 
that,  at  the  depth  of  this  nature  which  the  inner  life  thus 
reveals  to  us,  there  are  spiritual  mysteries  which  for  us, 
in  our  present  ignorance,  are  so  far  unfathomable.  Doubt- 
less these  mysteries  are  n't  unfathomable  in  themselves ; 
doubtless  the  one  spirit  whose  life  embodies  itself  in  all 
our  inner  natures  knows  what  he  means,  and  has  some 
sort  of  interpretation  for  even  the  apparently  most  capri- 
cious of  his  truths.  But  as  for  us,  in  our  conscious  na- 
ture, we  only  know  that  we,  just  now,  are  forced  to  see 
this  sense- world  and  to  work  in  it.  Let  us  then  turn  for 
the  solution  of  our  mysteries  back  again  to  the  long  and 
painful  road  of  experience.  Why  we  are  bound  by  our 
inner  nature  to  see  this  world  of  sense-facts  we  can  surely 
never  say,  until  we  shall  have  first  learned  empirically 
what  sense-facts  we  are  bound  to  see.  This,  however, 
only  science  can  teach  us." 

We  return  to  the  natural  order,  as  you  see,  in  company 
with  such  thinkers,  but  by  no  means  as  if,  in  returning, 
we  left  our  idealism  behind  us.  We  return,  but,  once 
more,  not  to  that  outer  order  which  we  left  for  the  paths 
of  speculation  in  the  seventeenth  century.  The  empirical 


270  THE  SPIRIT   OP  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY, 

sciences,  which,  in  their  own  way  and  largely  apart  from 
any  but  indirect  speculative  influences,  have  been  develop- 
ing ever  since  the  seventeenth  century,  which  have  been 
extending  their  field,  elaborating  their  theories,  tilling 
their  vast  and  fruitful  fields,  will  indeed  no  doubt  at  first 
misinterpret  our  return.  Their  servants,  full  of  the  learn- 
ing and  the  successes  of  two  centuries  of  inductive  re- 
search, will  scornfully  say :  "  See  these  idealists  !  They 
long  tried  to  call  the  world  their  dream,  and  to  construct 
\tji  priori.  But  they  grew  hungry  in  their  wilderness, 
feeding  the  swine  of  strange  masters,  and  longing  for  the 
very  husks  of  speculative  guess-work  and  delusion.  Now 
they  come  back  like  prodigals,  hoping  that  experience,  our 
master,  will  have  facts  enough  and  to  spare  for  them.  In 
truth,  had  they  remained  at  home,  their  reflective  clever- 
ness might  have  been  of  much  use  to  science.  But  they 
took  the  portion  of  intelligence  that  belonged  to  them, 
and  went  away ;  and  here  they  come  now,  in  all  the  rags 
of  their  poor  systems."  So,  perhaps,  the  scoffers  will 
insist.  But  this  sort  of  scorn  will  not  impose  upon  us. 
We  know  that  we  were  not  prodigals,  but  rather  spies, 
sent  to  spy  out  the  land  of  promise,  and  what  we  bring 
back  with  us  are  great  clusters  of  grapes  as  specimens  of 
the  wealth  of  a  land  of  milk  and  honey  beyond  the  Jordan 
of  mystery.  That  land  is  still  unconquered.  We  return 
to  the  friendly  camp  in  the  wilderness  of  this  world,  and 
we  ask  its  followers  to  arise  and  go  with  us,  that  we  may 
yet  enter  into  that  land,  and  possess  it. 

But,  figures  aside,  our  undertaking  as  we  return  to  the 
study  of  the  natural  order  is  simply  this :  the  mystery  of 
the  world  is  for  us  through  and  through  an  ideal,  a  spir- 
itual mystery.  This  great  order  is  once  for  all  divine, 
And  thus  much  our  idealism  has  taught  us,  namely,  (1) 
by  showing  us  that,  except  for  the  world  of  ideas,  except 
for  the  phenomena  that  appear  as  outer  to  beings  with 
minds,  or  that  have  their  place  in  the  inner  life  of  such 


THE  RISE  OF   THE  DOCTRINE   OF  EVOLUTION.          271 

beings,  there  is  no  reality  at  all ;  (2)  by  showing  us,  as 
Kant  has  shown,  that  there  can  be  no  rational  order  in 
nature  unless  the  thought  of  some  rational  being  intro- 
duces such  order,  and  (3)  by  leading  us  to  postulate,  as 
all  the  post-Kantian  constructive  idealists  have  postulated, 
that  beneath  the  nature  of  our  conscious  self,  which  finds 
itself  forced  to  recognize  this  or  that  as  outer,  there  must 
lie  a  complete,  an  infinite  Self,  which  somehow,  whether 
by  a  divine  caprice  or  by  a  divine  rationality,  or  by  both 
combined,  is  actually  and  of  its  own  nature  not  outwardly 
forced,  but  inwardly  minded,  to  express  itself  in  this 
whole  vast  world  of  ours.  If,  with  all  this  at  heart,  we"" 
return  to  the  outer  order,  it  is  because  we  desire  our  ideal- 
ism to  remain  no  longer  barren,  abstract,  afraid  of  ex- 
perience, capricious,  wayward,  sentimental,  or  fantastic. 
We  want  our  idealism  to  do  a  manly  work.  We  want  it 
to  enter  upon  its  true  task,  not  of  dreaming  of  a  possible 
perfection,  but  of  transforming,  of  enlivening,  of  spirit- 
ualizing, the  concrete  life  of  humanity.  Idealism  on  one 
side,  dreaming  its  splendid  dreams  ;  science  on  the  other 
side,  condemned  to  an  irrational  and  Philistine  enmity  to 
the  spiritual,  —  what  spectacle  could  be  more  unworthy  of 
humanity  !  In  fact,  nobody  has  ever  really  desired  such 
a  situation.  In  its  most  fantastic  moments  idealism,  un- 
less it  were  perchance  the  romantic  irony  of  some  young 
Friedrich  Schlegel,  has  been  sincerely  anxious  to  embody 
experience,  and  to  get  at  the  truth  of  life.  Science,  on 
the  other  hand,  in  the  person  and  work  of  any  earnest 
and  sensible  investigator,  however  narrow  his  specialty, 
however  unspiritual  seemed  his  facts,  has  been  through 
and  through  spiritual  in  its  inmost  conception  of  reality. 
Divorced  from  speculation,  as  it  has  usually  chosen  to  be, 
during  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the 
first  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it  still  has  never 
lost  sight  of  its  task,  namely,  to  elaborate  the  facts  of 
experience  in  such  wise  as  to  find  and  to  make  apparent 


272  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

in  them  the  laws,  the  essential  truths,  the  ideas  of  things. 
When  in  Laplace's  "  Celestial  Mechanics,"  and  in  La- 
grange's  completion  of  the  system  of  the  whole  mechani- 
cal science  of  his  day,  a  vast  multitude  of  the  most  con- 
fusing natural  phenomena  were  reduced  to  expressions  of 
a  very  few  ultimate  and  rigid  thoughts,  what  was  this  but 
an  embodiment  of  the  search  for  rationality  in  nature  ? 
And  all  modern  science  up  to  the  moment  of  which  we 
are  now  speaking  has  been  one  vast  and  toilsome  poem  of 
rationality,  fragmentary  indeed,  but  even  in  its  fragments 
how  beautiful ! 

The  business  of  speculation  is  then  already  outlined. 
What  science  seeks  is  essentially  what  we  are  seeking,  — 
to  catch  the  rhythm  and  the  very  pulse-beat  of  the  reason 
that  is  and  must  be,  amidst  all  the  caprice  of  nature,  yes, 
even  because  of  this  wealth  of  caprice  in  nature,  at  the 
very  heart  of  the  world.  We  return  to  the  world  of  sci- 
ence, then,  to  enrich  its  postulates  by  our  idealistic  inter- 
pretation, and  to  enrich  our  own  too  abstract  fashion  of 
conceiving  the  rationality  of  things  through  the  wealth  of 
nature's  facts. 

Thus,  as  you  see,  I  am  now  trying,  still,  of  course,  in 
my  attitude  as  mere  chronicler,  to  express  the  spirit  in 
which,  in  the  early  decades  of  this  century,  many  men  of 
considerable  speculative  training  set  about  their  work  in 
various  departments  of  empirical  research.  They  were 
idealists  at  heart ;  they  became  scientific  specialists  by 
profession.  Of  course,  such  is  the  narrowness  of  human 
nature,  that  only  with  great  difficulty  could  such  persons 
keep  at  once  the  purity  of  their  idealistic  faith  and  the 
exactness  of  their  powers  of  empirical  observation,  equally 
well  in  sight  as  they  toiled.  Some  of  them,  especially  in 
Germany,  remained  for  a  long  time  the  prey  of  various 
forms  of  systematic  delusion,  and  warped  their  observa- 
tions in  order  to  illustrate  their  voluminous  speculations. 
Still  more  of  them,  however,  in  turning  their  attention  to 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION.          273 

exact  scholarship,  or  to  physical  science,  sought  as  much 
as  possible  to  lay  aside  whatever  speculative  concern  they 
had  ever  possessed.  But  still,  after  all,  say  what  one  will, 
one  cannot  fairly  examine  the  thinking  of  this  our  cen- 
tury without  seeing  that  during  its  whole  course  empiri- 
cal research  and  the  truly  philosophical  spirit  have  been 
bound  in  a  close  marriage  tie  compared  to  which  all  previ- 
ous unions  of  speculation  and  of  experience  have  been  but 
the  most  passing  moods  of  mutual  admiration. 

The  most  noteworthy  offspring  and  illustration  of  this 
marriage  tie  has  been  the  vast  industry  that  has  gathered 
about  what  we  now  call  the  idea  of  evolution,  as  a  law,  or 
rather,  a  group  of  laws,  of  nature. 

n. 

The  philosophy  of  evolution  was,  in  fact,  to  be  my  spe- 
cial topic  to-day,  and  doubtless  I  have  spent  too  long  a 
time  in  approaching  this  topic  itself.  But  so  much  I 
have  gained  if  I  have  now  prepared  the  way  for  a  brief 
preliminary  statement  of  the  nature  of  the  process  whereby 
this  philosophy  arose  in  modern  thinking.  The  way  was 
this :  Idealism  having  proved  as  unable  to  construct  the 
visible  world  upon  any  a  priori  rational  scheme,  as  it  was 
successful  in  laying  the  foundation  for  the  spiritual  phi- 
losophy of  the  future,  the  problem  that  the  earlier  ideal- 
ists had  left  to  their  successors  was  now :  To  comprehend 
the  world  of  experience  in  terms  of  the  fundamental 
idealistic  postulates.  In  a  search  for  the  solution  of  this 
problem,  thought  was  led  to  the  rational  study  of  human 
history.  Surely  if  the  great  Spirit  is  anywhere  to  be 
manifest  to  us,  then  it  should  be  in  the  growth  of  human- 
ity. To  see  this  growth  as  a  spiritual  process  became, 
therefore,  an  object  of  serious  concern.  Of  course  here, 
as  everywhere  else  in  science,  some  of  the  first  efforts  were 
bold  and  crude  enough,  but  they  were  suggestive.  They 
led  in  time  to  that  vast  undertaking  known  as  modern 


274  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

historical  research,  a  sort  of  study  that,  strange  as  it  may 
seein  to  say  so,  is  not  yet  a  century  old.  For,  as  we  shall 
see,  what  used  to  be  called  historical  research  was  some- 
thing that  in  former  centuries  embodied  a  spirit  very  dif- 
ferent from  what  we  now  know  as  the  historical  spirit. 
But  the  interest  thus  aroused  spread  to  other  branches  of 
science.  Natural  history,  which  formerly  had  been,  not- 
withstanding its  name,  a  merely  descriptive  science,  began 
to  be  pursued  upon  a  deeper  plan ;  it  became  truly  his- 
torical, examined  into  the  genesis  of  organic  forms,  and, 
in  the  field  of  geological  study,  set  about  the  study  of 
the  succession  of  organic  forms  upon  the  earth's  surface. 
The  field  thus  entered  upon  proved  unexpectedly  fruitful. 
The  century  became  the  typical  century  of  the  histori- 
cal theory  of  creation.  In  previous  periods  of  modern 
thought,  thinkers  had  deliberately  neglected  the  history 
of  things.  Nature,  not  as  it  grows,  but  as  it  eternally  is, 
was  that  which  constituted  the  outer  order  known  to  the 
seventeenth  century.  Events  had  little  concern  to  a  doc- 
trine like  Spinoza's.  Newton's  conception  of  physical 
science  was  founded,  indeed,  upon  the  observation  of  the 
actual  events  of  nature ;  but  these  events  were  to  be  ex- 
plained, if  possible,  by  eternal  laws  like  gravitation,  and 
history  was  to  be  absorbed  in  mechanism.  When  the 
eighteenth  century  turned  its  eyes  towards  the  inner  life, 
it  still  studied  an  ideally  permanent  thing  called  human 
nature,  which  savage  life  illustrated  in  its  primitive  inno- 
cence, civilized  life  in  its  artificial  disguises,  but  which 
nothing  in  heaven  or  earth,  except  the  will  of  its  creator, 
could  essentially  change.  But  for  our  nineteenth  century 
it  is  just  the  change,  the  flow,  the  growth  of  things,  that 
is  the  most  interesting  feature  of  the  universe.  Old- 
fashioned  science  used  to  go  about  classifying  things. 
There  were  live  things  and  dead  things;  of  live  things 
there  were  classes,  orders,  families,  genera,  species,  —  all 
permanent  facts  of  nature.  As  for  man,  he  had  one  char. 


THE   RISE   OF   THE   DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION.          275 

acteristic  type  of  inner  life,  that  was  in  all  ages  and  sta- 
tions essentially  the  same,  —  in  the  king  and  in  the  peas- 
ant, in  the  master  and  in  the  slave,  in  the  man  of  the 
city  and  in  the  savage.  The  glory  of  science  lay  just  in 
its  power  to  perceive  this  essence  of  the  eternally  human 
everywhere  in  man's  life.  The  dignity  of  human  nature, 
too,  lay  in  just  this  its  permanence.  Because  of  such  per- 
manence one  could  prove  all  men  to  be  naturally  equal, 
and  our  own  Declaration  of  Independence  is  thus  founded 
upon  speculative  principles  that,  as  they  are  there  stated, 
have  been  rendered  meaningless  by  the  modern  doctrine 
of  evolution.  Valuable,  indeed,  was  all  this  unhistorical 
analysis  of  the  world  and  of  man,  valuable  as  a  prepara- 
tion for  the  coming  insight ;  but  how  un vital,  how  unspir- 
itual,  how  crude  seems  to  us  now  all  that  eighteenth-cen- 
tury conception  of  the  mathematically  permanent,  the 
essentially  unprogressive  and  stagnant  human  nature,  in 
the  empty  dignity  of  its  inborn  rights,  when  compared 
with  our  modern  conception  of  the  growing,  struggling, 
historically  continuous  humanity,  whose  rights  are  nothing 
until  it  wins  them  in  the  tragic  process  of  civilization, 
whose  dignity  is  the  dignity  attained  as  the  prize  of  un- 
told ages  of  suffering,  whose  institutions  embody  thou- 
sands of  years  of  ardor  and  of  hard  thinking,  whose  treas- 
ures even  of  emotion  are  the  bequest  of  a  sacred  antiquity 
of  self-conquest !  Not  inalienable,  but  hard  won  and  pain- 
fully kept  are  the  true  rights  of  man.  Not  a  special  crea- 
tion, but  a  living  organism  is  our  nature;  an  organism 
not  permanent  in  its  structure,  but  the  outcome  of  labor ; 
an  organism  with  a  long  embryonic  development,  capable 
of  degeneration  as  well  as  of  growth,  and  needing  there- 
fore our  constant  care  lest  it  lose  all  the  spirituality  and 
all  the  rights  that  it  has  thus  far  acquired. 

Thus,  I  say,  the  historical  conception  of  the  world,  and 
above  all,  of  the  world  of  human  nature,  has  appeared  in 
our  modern  life.  I  am  now  to  trace  more  precisely  the 


276  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

growth  and  the  consequences  of  this  doctrine  of  evolution. 
As  in  the  case  of  the  study  of  Schopenhauer,  at  the  last 
time,  my  task  is  at  once  aided  and  hindered  by  the  popu- 
lar reputation  of  my  topic.  Many  of  the  things  that  one 
can  most  easily  say  about  evolution  are  nowadays  almost 
too  familiar,  having  been  discussed  even  in  the  newspa- 
pers until  we  are  weary  of  them.  On  the  other  hand,  a 
deeper  insight  into  the  true  problems  suggested  by  evolu- 
tion is  rather  the  more  difficult  on  account  of  this  famil- 
iarity; for  the  aspect  of  a  deep  subject  which  we  most 
need  to  reflect  upon  is  never  the  one  which  purely  popu- 
lar discussion  is  likely  to  favor.  My  difficulty  is,  there- 
fore, in  part  like  the  difficulty  of  one  writing  an  essay 
upon  Hamlet's  Soliloquy,  or  on  the  Beatitudes.  The 
words  are  so  familiar  that  the  meaning  comes  to  seem 
remote.  Even  so  here  ;  the  word  "  evolution  "  occurs  on 
very  many  modern  title-pages,  until  one  too  easily  forms 
a  habit  of  shutting  any  new  book  in  which  he  chances  to 
encounter  a  term  thus  often  repeated,  but  seldom  appre- 
ciated. 

The  modern  historical  spirit  assumed  a  definite  form 
not  far  from  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Waterloo.     The 
two  events  were,  in  fact,  not  at  all  disconnected.     In  Ger< 
many,  the  romantic  school  proper  had  by  this  time  fallen 
into  a  decline.    The  romantic  movement,  in  a  wider  sensef 
was,  however,  still  flourishing,  and,  in  fact  the  new  histor* 
ical  movement  was  a  direct  outgrowth  of  this  romantic- 
interest  in  life.     As  for  the  mechanism  of  the  process 
that  is  very  obvious,  but  as  it  is  not  so  frequently  de 
scribed  to  our  public  as  it  has  been  to  the  German  public 
I  must  dwell  for  a  moment  on  the  main  aspects  of  the  in' 
tellectual  situation  in  Germany  in  the  first  decade  of  the 
century.     Germany  itself,  as  you  know,  was  at  this  time 
a  land  trodden  under  the  invader's  foot,  corrupted  by  the 
invader's  appeals  to  the  avarice  of  its  minor  princes,  and 
left,  in  general,  in  a  hopeless  political  situation,  which, 


THE   RISE   OF  THE   DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION.          277 

strangely  enough,  aroused  no  strong  lamentations  in  the 
minds  of  the  nation's  own  best  men.  Hegel,  for  example, 
warmly  admired  for  a  time  Napoleon,  whom  he  «aw  in 
person  about  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Jena,  and  whom  he 
then  looked  upon  wonderingly  as  upon  a  sort  of  Welt- 
geist  zu  Pferde,  as  the  philosopher  in  effect  expressed 
himself.  This  political  indifference,  this  free  intellectual 
curiosity,  which  marveled  at  the  changes  of  the  age  and 
felt  no  patriotic  longings,  was  typical  of  the  mood  of  all 
Germany's  intellectual  class  from  Goethe  down.  Thought 
was,  after  all,  free ;  one  had  the  empire  of  the  air  and  the 
recesses  of  the  heart  to  one's  self,  and  one  let  contempo- 
rary history  go  its  course  as  it  would.  Meanwhile,  how- 
ever, this  idealism  without  concrete  and  visible  ideals  was, 
as  we  have  seen,  not  only  a  capricious  but  a  dangerous 
thing.  The  representative  younger  poets  of  the  time 
reveled,  as  we  know,  in  emotion  and  in  mystery.  The 
whole  romantic  movement  might  be  defined  as  a  con- 
sciously wayward  and,  before  it  was  done,  a  fairly  morbid 
reflection  upon  the  heart  of  man  viewed  merely  as  the 
heart.  You  felt,  you  experienced,  you  sang,  you  grew 
constantly  more  sentimental,  you  gloried  in  the  wealth  of 
your  feelings,  you  wept  in  public  with  your  numberless 
lyrics,  and  then  you  felt  and  experienced  and  sang  again 
with  endless  ardor  and  garrulity.  If  you  studied  nature, 
you  loved  above  all  things  mere  mysteries,  divining  rods, 
magic,  the  night-side  of  nature  generally.  But,  of  course, 
in  all  this  there  had  to  be,  after  all,  something  objective 
as  a  foundation.  Even  feelings  and  mysteries  must  look 
for  facts  to  support  them,  and,  greatly  to  our  advantage, 
the  romanticists  early  turned  their  attention  to  certain 
records  of  humanity's  past  experience  which  had  been, 
until  very  recently,  almost  wholly  neglected  by  modern 
students.  Such  records  were  of  various  classes,  but  had 
in  common  this,  that  they  all  alike  stood  for  ancient,  or 
else  for  very  remote  experiences,  the  product  either  of 


278  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

quite  mysterious  or  of  little  understood  times  and  peo 
pies.  The  favorite  sources  of  such  records  were  the 
Orient  and  the  Middle  Ages.  One  could  not  have  named 
two  regions  of  learned  research  that  were  more  remote 
from  the  customary  thought  of  the  middle  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  than  mediaeval  and  Oriental  civilization  ; 
one  could  not  name  any  two  branches  of  study  that 
appealed  more  to  the  distinctively  romantic  spirit  than 
did  these.  The  Middle  Ages,  at  any  rate  as  men  then 
conceived  them,  were  of  course  the  typical  period  of  ro- 
mance. Then  emotion  had  possessed  every  possible  object 
wherein  to  revel,  —  mysteries,  magic,  unknown  countries, 
crusades,  knightly  ideals,  fairy  tales,  religious  ardor,  free- 
dom of  artistic  forms,  adventures,  castles,  saints,  and  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  Now  that  all  these  things  had  per- 
ished, what  better  could  romantic  poets  and  readers  do 
than  recall  the  long-past  glories,  and  revive  the  buried 
emotions.  As  for  the  Orient,  what  wisdom  might  lie 
treasured  there  was  still  only  faintly  to  be  conjectured. 
The  prosaic  Englishmen  indeed,  having  conquered  India., 
had  fallen  to  making  learned  researches  into  the  litera- 
ture, the  thought,  and  the  laws  of  their  new  subjects, 
mainly  with  a  view  to  the  practical  business  of  govern- 
ment. These  researches  had  begun  to  become  known  on 
the  Continent.  Sacred  books,  some  of  them  philosophical, 
had  been  translated.  Meanwhile  Mohammedan  civiliza- 
tion also,  from  Persian  and  Arabic  sources,  was  finding 
its  way  to  the  renewed  attention  of  European  scholars. 
No  amateur  esoteric  Buddhist  of  our  own  day  has  felt  a 
deeper  curiosity  about  what  this  Oriental  wisdom  might 
mean,  or  has  labored  harder  to  find  out,  than  did  numerous 
scholarly  youth  of  this  romantic  period.  Poets  imitated 
Oriental  forms  ;  Hindu  pantheism,  or  Persian  Sufism,  was 
clothed  in  melodious  verse  by  such  voluminous  singers  as 
Riickert ;  men  like  the  Schlegels  forgot  the  romantic 
irony,  to  learn  Sanskrit ;  a  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt  ex» 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION.    279 

pounded  the  Bhagavat-gita.  Thus  began  the  scholarship 
that  has  produced  the  science  of  modern  comparative  phi- 
lology,  and  our  whole  knowledge  of  the  true  life  of  the 
far  East. 

Now  the  thing  to  note,  for  our  purpose,  in  all  this  new 
study,  is,  that  its  motive  was  at  first  mainly  romantic,  but 
that  its  outcome  was  very  significantly  scientific.  The 
scholars  of  the  two  previous  centuries  had  been  linguists, 
with  a  great  love,  in  many  cases,  of  the  aBsthetic  aspects 
of  scholarship,  but  with  little  sense  for  what  we  now 
think  to  be  the  truly  human  element  in  the  study  of  the 
languages  and  literatures  of  the  world.  It  was  the  ro- 
mantic love  of  passion,  of  mystery,  and  emotion,  that  now 
set  the  heart's  blood  of  scholarship  fairly  bounding  in  the 
veins  of  the  new  learning.  Sanskrit,  Arabic,  Persian,  the 
tongues  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  old  chroni- 
clers, the  poems  of  the  mediaeval  Empire,  —  why,  all 
such  things,  if  the  eighteenth-century  scholar  had  even 
deigned  to  think  of  them  with  respect  at  all,  would  have 
seemed  to  him  but  a  series  of  crabbed  linguistic  puzzles, 
not  worthy  for  an  instant  of  comparison  with  the  problems 
of  classical  philology.  But  the  romantic  movement 
changed  all  that.  The  very  spirit  that  in  Great  Britain 
expressed  itself  in  Scott's  romances,  once  wedded  to  the 
minuteness  of  German  scholarship,  was  destined  to  trans- 
form the  whole  study  of  history. 

For  see,  it  was  history  that  the  romanticists  thus  found 
themselves  erelong  devotedly  studying.  Men  who  had 
set  out  to  be  merely  fantastic  dreamers  perceived  that  the 
far-off  humanity  of  Asia  or  of  mediaeval  Europe,  had 
dreamed  better  than  they  themselves  could  ever  hope  to 
dream.  As  they  studied  the  records  of  this  humanity^ 
the  dead  past  became  once  more  alive.  It  was  the  pres- 
ent that  now  seemed,  in  its  swift  changes  and  in  its  un- 
steady ideals,  the  unessential  expression  of  the  spirit  of 
humanity.  Above  all,  men  felt  how  those  far-off  times  had 


280  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

possessed,  iii  their  more  permanent  institutions,  a  trea- 
sure which  the  nineteenth  century  was  daily  risking, 
if  not  losing,  in  the  shifting  conflicts  of  the  Napoleonic 
period.  And  thus  the  institutions  of  humanity,  whose 
study  has  become  so  characteristic  of  our  whole  modern 
movement,  first  came  into  the  foreground  of  attention. 
Laws,  customs,  religions,  began  to  show  a  human  worth 
which  students  had,  up  to  that  time,  persistently  ignored. 

In  the  keen  interest  that  now  quickly  grew  and  con- 
creted itself,  nothing  was  too  insignificant  to  deserve  ob- 
servation, if  it  illustrated  the  passions  or  the  deeper  faiths 
of  men.  Fairy  tales,  preserved  in  the  mouths  of  the  coun- 
try people,  ballads,  rural  superstitions,  seemed  interesting 
to  the  wisest  thinkers.  Even  the  rude  dialects  of  the 
illiterate  began  to  acquire  dignity.  The  human  was  not 
of  necessity  the  cultivated.  The  human  was  the  wide- 
spread or  the  ancient  in  speech  or  in  behavior.  It  was 
the  deep,  the  emotional,  the  thing  much  loved  by  many 
men,  the  poetical,  the  organic,  the  vital,  in  civilization. 
Scholars  looked  for  it  not  in  modern  books,  but  in  the 
lore  of  forgotten  ages,  or  heard  it  from  the  mouths  of  the 
very  peasantry  of  their  own  time.  The  brothers  Grimm 
began  to  collect  their  German  popular  tales.  Poets  were 
proud  to  imitate  the  ballads  of  the  people. 

Nor  did  classical  philology  itself  remain  uninfluenced 
by  the  romantic  movement.  On  the  contrary,  this  move- 
ment transformed  its  very  ideals  and  methods.  It  was 
no  longer  to  favor  mere  linguistic  skill,  nor  to  cultivate 
taste  by  analyzing  the  finest  models  of  ancient  literary 
art.  It  was  rather  to  comprehend  the  inner  life  of  an- 
tiquity, to  set  forth  the  nature  of  Greek  and  Roman 
institutions,  beliefs,  and  conduct,  to  show  what  relation 
that  civilization  had  to  our  own,  to  make  linguistic  study 
a  handmaid  of  truly  humane  scholarship,  to  treat  the 
classical  history,  not  as  a  mere  collection  of  examples  for 
moral  or  for  literary  edification,  but  as  an  evolution.  For, 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  DOCTRINE   OF  EVOLUTION.          281 

already,  as  you  see,  the  idea  of  what  we  call  evolution  was 
dawning  on  the  minds  of  the  scholars  of  that  day.  Far 
off  indeed  was  our  modern  theory,  with  all  its  world-em- 
bracing inductions ;  but  the  spirit  which  it  was  to  em- 
body was  born  of  the  very  dreams  of  the  romantic  period. 
Herein  lies  the  continuity  of  thought  which  connects  us, 
in  all  the  so-called  realism  of  our  prosaic  modern  research, 
with  the  dreamers  who  dreamed,  with  the  fantastic  poets 
who  failed,  in  the  first  decades  of  our  century. 

m. 

But  I  have  already  somewhat  anticipated.  I  said  a 
moment  since  that  the  battle  of  Waterloo  was  not  discon- 
nected with  the  first  bloom  of  the  new  historical  study. 
The  connection  is  not  far  to  seek.  Before  1815  the  help- 
lessness of  Germany,  bleeding  and  corrupted,  left  for  the 
intellectual  leaders  of  the  people  no  resource  equal  to 
their  dreams  and  their  abstract  idealism.  The  end  of  the 
Napoleonic  episode  brought  room  on  earth  for  the  feet  of 
those  who  had  long  been  traversing  the  empire  of  the 
air.  The  romanticists,  however,  did  not  on  that  account 
forsake  contemplation.  They  only  found  themselves  more 
disposed  to  scholarship,  and  less  given  to  fantasy.  I  called 
the  return  to  the  natural  order,  a  little  while  since,  a  re- 
turn to  the  wilderness  of  this  present  world.  Of  course, 
I  might  reverse  the  Scripture  metaphor  and,  appealing 
now  to  the  book  of  Revelation,  say  that,  as  Satan  lay 
bound  in  St.  Helena,  the  church  of  the  spirit  could  return 
from  the  wilderness  into  which  it  had  fled ;  and  that  it 
swiftly  did  so.  The  scholarly  motives  that  we  have  just 
been  analyzing  produced  hereupon,  in  quick  succession, 
a  long  series  of  epoch-marking  historical  books.  More- 
over, there  was  yet  another  reason  why  the  political 
changes  of  the  time  were  favorable  to  historical  study. 
When  great  events  are  past,  and  a  passionate  episode  of 
our  lives  is  completed,  we  are  easily  disposed  to  the  writ- 


282  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODEKN   PHILOSOPHY. 

ing  of  chronicles.  After  one's  first  love  affair,  one  keeps 
a  diary  for  a  season,  or  perhaps  begins  an  autobiography, 
with  special  reference  to  the  story  of  one's  mightier  pas- 
sions. The  doctrine  of  evolution  took  its  rise  in  such  an 
effort  of  humanity  to  write  its  own  autobiography,  after 
a  terrible  experience  of  being  in  love  with  what  it  had 
believed  to  be  liberty,  and  of  being  jilted  by  what  proved 
to  be  despotism.  Thus  all  things  worked  together  to  the 
same  end.  It  is  surprising  to  look  over  the  list  of  these 
great  books,  each  one  of  which  marks  an  era  in  modern 
investigation,  and  so  many  of  which  belong  to  the  years 
between  1815  and  1835.  The  list  shows  a  constant  wid- 
ening and  deepening  of  the  historical  interest.  General 
literature,  Roman  law,  mediaeval  traditions  and  institu- 
tions, classical  philology,  Oriental  literature,  compara- 
tive philology,  and  at  last  Christian  theology  itself,  are 
assailed  after  the  historical  fashion,  and  one  research 
leads  to  another.  The  two  Humboldts,  the  Schlegels,  the 
Grimms,  Niebuhr,  Boeckh,  Ranke,  were  all  in  the  front 
rank  of  the  students  of  the  day,  and  a  list,  if  complete, 
would  name  works  by  all  of  them,  and  by  numerous  other 
scarcely  less  important  scholars.  Curious  was  the  fate 
^hat  drove  every  scholarly  specialty  to  become  more  and 
/nore  historical.  A  book  like  Strauss's  "  Life  of  Jesus  " 
might  be  in  itself  so  novel  in  its  methods,  so  tentative  and 
imperfect  in  its  hypotheses,  that  its  own  author  would  en- 
tirely change  erelong  his  opinion  about  some  of  his  own 
most  noteworthy  contentions.  Yet  the  storm  of  contro- 
versy that  it  aroused  would  drive  friend  and  foe  to  his- 
torical researches  of  a  new  sort ;  and  the  whole  of  mod- 
ern Christology,  orthodox  as  well  as  unorthodox,  has  been 
profoundly  modified  by  the  indirect  effect  of  Strauss's 
bold  and  suggestive  investigation. 

As  for  the  outcome  of  all  this  ferment,  it  was  inevita- 
bly the  conception  of  the  higher  human  life  as  one  vast 
and  connected  growth  from  lower  to  nobler  conditions! 


THE   RISE   OF  THE  DOCTRINE   OF  EVOLUTION.  283 

with  episodes,  indeed,  of  stagnation  and  degeneracy,  and 
with  vast  outlying  regions  of  almost  changeless  barbaric 
or  imperfectly  civilized  mankind,  but  with  a  meaning, 
after  all,  about  even  the  saddest  of  its  phenomena,  such 
as  the  moralizing  historians  of  former  generations  had 
never  understood.  This  meaning  lay  in  the  physical  de- 
pendence of  man,  for  his  whole  civilization  and  culture, 
upon  the  former  generations  of  men.  After  a  fashion 
people  had,  of  course,  always  recognized  such  dependence. 
But  how  deep  and  how  concrete  the  new  history  found 
the  dependence  to  be!  Our  language,  our  institutions, 
our  beliefs,  our  ideals,  whatever  in  short,  is  mightiest  and 
dearest  in  all  our  world,  all  this  together  is  a  slow  and 
hard- won  growth,  nobody's  arbitrary  invention,  no  gift 
from  above,  no  outcome  of  a  social  compact,  no  immedi- 
ate expression  of  reason,  but  the  slowly  formed  concre- 
tion of  ages  of  blind  effort,  unconscious,  but  wise  in  its 
unconsciousness,  often  selfish,  but  humane  even  in  its  self- 
ishness. The  ideals  win  the  battle  of  life  by  the  secret 
connivance,  as  it  were,  of  numberless  seemingly  un-ideal 
forces.  Climate,  hunger,  commerce,  authority,  supersti- 
tion, war,  cruelty,  toil,  greed,  compromise,  tradition,  con- 
servatism, loyalty,  sloth,  —  all  these  cooperate,  through 
countless  ages,  with  a  hundred  other  discernible  tenden- 
cies, to  build  up  civilization.  And  civilization  itself  is, 
in  consequence,  a  much  deeper  thing  than  appears  on  the 
surface  of  our  consciousness.  Instinct  has  a  larger  share 
in  it  than  reasoning.  Faith  counts  for  more  in  it  than 
insight.  It  embodies  in  concrete  form  that  deeper  self 
that  the  idealists  loved  to  talk  about.  Your  deeper  self  is 
plainly  a  sort  of  abstract  and  epitome  of  the  whole  his- 
tory of  humanity.  A  new  and  wiser  form  of  the  doc- 
trine of  metempsychosis  occurs  to  you.  The  humanity 
that  toiled  and  bled  and  worshiped  of  old  has  trans- 
mitted to  you,  in  your  language  and  institutions,  in  the 
ancient  lore  that  your  fathers  teach  you,  in  your  preju- 


284  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

dices,  in  your  faults,  in  your  conscience,  in  your  religion, 
the  very  soul  of  its  agony  and  of  its  glory.  You  can 
read  in  history  your  personal  instincts  written  in  the  lan- 
guage of  evolution.  You  can  watch  the  human  spirit  in 
its  growth  with  a  deeper  sense  of  the  "  That  art  Thou  " 
than  you  had  ever  before  possessed.  The  metaphors  of 
your  heathen  ancestors  are  crystallized  in  every  word  that 
you  utter.  The  very  horrors  of  their  superstitious  are 
the  true  though  humble  origin  of  your  loftiest  and  most 
sacred  devotions.  Humanity  never  really  forsakes  its 
past.  The  days  of  mankind  are  bound  each  to  each  in 
mutual  piety. 

All  these  ideas  have  now,  to  be  sure,  become,  by  dint 
of  much  repetition,  too  commonplace.  It  is  well  for  us  to 
remember  that  the  most  cultivated  thinkers  of  the  last  cen- 
tury scarcely  in  any  measure  possessed  them.  The  unity 
of  humanity,  as  the  last  century  conceived  it,  was,  I  repeat, 
an  abstract  unity,  a  dead  and  permanent  thing.  All  men 
had  erect  stature,  language,  reason,  and  the  power  to 
laugh.  As  some  men  stood  straighter  than  others,  so  some 
men  had  more  wit,  and  of  such  were  the  enlightened  souls 
of  that  century.  That  was  to  their  own  minds  the  whole 
story  of  the  unity  of  human  life,  and  as  for  the  growth  of 
institutions,  and  all  the  agony  of  the  winning  of  our  life 
by  the  men  of  old,  —  the  eighteenth  century,  at  least  until 
its  very  last  decades,  thanked  God  that  it  knew  too  much 
of  wisdom  to  worry  itself  about  any  of  the  men  of  old  ex- 
cept the  wise  ones,  such  as  Cicero,  or  the  elegant  ones, 
such  as  Horace.  Superstition  you  outgrew,  the  customs 
of  your  ancestors  you  prudently  forgot,  and  of  history  you 
remembered  only  what  it  would  be  pleasing  to  narrate  on 
a  social  occasion.  Hence,  as  we  see,  our  modern  common- 
place is  after  all  something  of  a  novelty,  even  a  paradox. 

I  have  dwelt  so  long  upon  this  transformation  of  our 
notion  of  human  history,  because  people  too  frequently 
regard  the  doctrine  of  evolution  as  having  for  the  first 


THE   RISE   OF   THE   DOCTRINE   OF  EVOLUTION.          285 

time  flashed  upon  the  world  after  the  appearance  of  Dar- 
wiu's  u  Origin  of  Species."  Nobody  can  value  more  than  I 
do  the  significance  for  the  general  student  of  the  splendid 
achievement  of  Darwin ;  but  it  was  a  splendid  achieve- 
ment for  humanity  at  large  because  the  age  was  ripe  for 
the  extension  of  the  historical  conception  far  beyond  the 
boundaries  of  humanity  proper.  And,  once  more,  the 
age  was  thus  ripe  because  by  this  time  scholarship  had 
brought  into  existence  this  very  conception  of  history 
itself  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word.  If  you  can  con- 
ceive Darwin's  knowledge  of  natural  history,  his  investi- 
gations, and  his  marvelous  induction  that  led  to  the 
principle  of  natural  selection,  with  all  its  consequences, 
if,  I  say,  you  can  conceive  all  this  transferred  to  the  last 
century,  some  properly  informed  naturalists  might,  no 
doubt,  have  been  convinced ;  but  the  world  at  large  could 
have  found  no  place  for  the  doctrine.  It  would  have  been 
to  them  only  one  oddity  the  more  in  nature,  or  rather  in 
speculation.  They  would  have  called  it  Darwin's  paradox, 
and  would  have  banished  it  into  the  realm  of  curiosities. 
It  was  coming  into  an  historical  age  that  made  Darwin's 
book  so  great  a  prize,  and  the  idea  of  natural  selection  so 
deeply  suggestive  to  philosophy. 

And  now,  having  spent  so  much  time  in  laying  our 
foundation,  we  can  swiftly  suggest  in  a  few  words  the 
climax  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  which  the  natural 
sciences  have  at  last  made  possible.  Germany  began  the 
historical  movement.  It  was  left  for  England  to  com- 
plete the  ascendency  of  the  new  thought.  It  is  matter  of 
popular  knowledge  that  geology,  in  its  modern  form,  is 
largely  due  to  the  British  mind.  Lyell's  researches  sub- 
stituted for  the  catastrophes  which  the  earlier  geologists 
conceived  relatively  uniform  natural  processes,  whereby, 
as  they  worked  through  long  ages,  the  earth's  crust  had 
been  slowly  modified.  On  the  basis  of  this  uniformi- 
tarian  geology,  a  doctrine  of  the  transformation  of  species 


286  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODEKN   PHILOSOPHY. 

began  to  look  more  reasonable.  Such  a  doctrine,  indeed,  as 
a  mere  speculation,  is  one  of  the  oldest  guesses  of  infant 
science,  and  even  the  Darwinian  notion  of  natural  selection 
had  been  first  formulated  in  Greek  speculation  by  Em- 
pedocles,  before  the  time  of  Socrates.  But  such  guesses, 
however  finely  a  Schelling  might  write  out  their  substance 
in  poetical  form,  as  we  found  him  doing  awhile  since, 
could  never  mean  much  for  science  until  modern  geology 
had  made  probable  that  the  earth's  crust  itself  has  a  gen- 
uine history,  wherein  there  is  more  of  unity  than  of  catas- 
trophic change.  But  herewith  came  very  quickly  the  time 
when  natural  history  as  a  whole  could  assume  the  truly 
historical  shape.  Von  Baer's  embryological  researches, 
and  the  classifications  and  embryological  studies  of  Agas- 
siz,  showed  that  wonderful  parallelism  between  the  growth 
of  the  individual  life  and  the  relation  of  each  animal  form 
to  its  neighbors  and  predecessors  on  the  earth,  which  soon 
came  to  have  so  deep  a  scientific  meaning.  The  appear- 
ance of  Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Species  "  in  1859,  however, 
brought  to  a  focus  all  these  tendencies  of  modern  re- 
search. With  the  one  exception  of  Newton's  "  Principia," 
no  single  book  of  empirical  science  has  even  been  of  more 
importance  to  philosophy  than  this  work  of  Darwin's. 
And  you  know  now  wherein  the  importance  lay.  The 
world  was  longing  for  an  historical  view  of  phenomena. 
The  historical  interest  was  already  excited  to  the  keenest 
pitch.  Human  civilization  was  already  conceived  as  an 
evolution.  The  earth's  crust  was  already  known  to  em- 
body a  history  whose  gaps,  still,  even  at  this  present 
moment,  very  large,  were  already,  in  1859,  sufficiently 
reduced  to  make  probable  the  notion  that  a  continuous 
series  of  physical  process,  without  violent  convulsions, 
had  produced  the  whole  succession  of  geological  strata. 
The  old  nebular  hypothesis  of  Kant  and  La  Place  sug- 
gested that  the  whole  growth  of  our  solar  system  to  its 
present  form  had  been  part  of  the  very  process  that  has 


THE   RISE   OF   THE   DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION.          287 

ended  in  our  own  geological  history.  Only  the  boundary 
line  between  species  and  species,  only  the  difficulty  of  con- 
ceiving in  scientific  terms  the  growth  of  animal  forms 
without  the  interference  anywhere  of  special  creations, 
only  this,  which  was,  of  course,  most  felt  in  case  of  the 
distinction  between  man  and  the  animals,  remained  as  an 
apparently  impassable  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  triumph 
of  the  historical  movement.  Darwin's  book  removed  this 
last  great  obstacle.  In  the  working  of  natural  selection 
he  found  an  agency  sufficient  to  explain,  in  part,  if  not  in 
the  main,  the  transformation  of  species.  And  there  could 
be  no  question,  after  his  researches,  that  natural  selection 
is  a  vera  causa,  that  is,  is  actually  at  work  in  the  organic 
world.  Moreover,  he  showed,  in  his  first  and  in  his  later 
works,  that  the  whole  mass  of  evidence  for  the  transfor- 
mation of  species  and  the  animal  origin  of  man  is  far 
greater  than  the  evidence  that  natural  selection  itself  is 
the  only  natural  agency  at  work.  In  fact,  since  Darwin, 
while  naturalists  differ  endlessly  as  to  the  degree  to  which 
natural  selection  is  responsible  for  the  transformation  of 
species,  further  investigation  has  put  it  farther  and  farther 
beyond  question  that,  once  granting  the  postulates  of  em- 
pirical science,  the  doctrine  of  the  transformation  of  spe- 
cies, and  of  the  animal  origin  of  man,  is  simply  beyond 
question.  All  modern  naturalists  of  note  are  in  this  sense 
followers  of  Darwin,  not  that  they  all  hold  his  views  about 
natural  selection,  but  that  they  all  teach  the  doctrine  of 
transformation. 

But  our  interest  is  just  now  much  less  in  this  bit  of 
empirical  science  as  such  than  in  the  philosophical  views 
to  which  it  has  led  men. 

IV. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  had  its  rise,  as  we  have  now 
seen,  in  a  twofold  interest.  This  interest  was  first  an 
historical  one,  the  offspring  of  the  idealistic  interest  in  the 


288  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODKRN   PHILOSOPHY. 

meaning  of  things,  the  product  of  an  age  for  which  the 
processes  of  the  world  were  primarily  spiritual  processes, 
or  were  to  be  interpreted  in  the  light  and  by  the  analogy 
of  such  processes.  But,  on  the  other  side,  this  interest  was 
a  strongly  empirical  one,  the  offspring  of  a  dread  of  the 
extravagances  of  the  idealistic  period,  the  product  of  a 
hard-learned  lesson  in  caution,  the  embodiment  of  an  un- 
willingness to  mistake  fantasy  for  truth.  On  the  one  side, 
then,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  to  be  sharply  distin- 
guished from  the  naturalism  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
Unlike  that  naturalism  our  modern  doctrine  is  primarily 
disposed,  not  merely  to  explain,  but  to  estimate  nature. 
It  tries  to  find  growth  in  the  world  as  well  as  mechanism, 
progress  as  well  as  law,  ideally  interesting  products  as 
well  as  absolutely  rigid  processes.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  same  doctrine  has  become  more  and  more  dis- 
posed, as  time  has  gone  on,  to  suppress,  or  at  all  events  to 
subordinate  its  own  original  idealism  ;  for  it  is  a  doctrine 
about  experience,  a  theory  founded  on  observation ;  and 
mere  experience  as  such  does  n't  show  us  ideal  forces  at 
work  in  nature,  only  facts  that  we,  as  observers,  are  able 
to  interpret,  if  we  like,  in  terms  of  ideals.  Without  in- 
terest in  the  historical  aspect  of  things,  without,  then,  an 
essentially  idealistic  concern  for  what  the  events  of  the 
world  mean,  for  what  story  they  seem  to  embody,  we 
should  never  have  come  upon  this  notion  of  evolution  at 
all.  But  without  a  patient  devotion  to  facts,  and  a  rigid 
self-control  as  to  our  romantic  interpretations,  we  should 
never  have  done  the  work  necessary  to  verify  the  notion. 
There  remains,  then,  something  conflicting,  something  in- 
herently self-contradictory  in  the  views  nowadays  current 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  process  of  evolution  itself.  This 
inner  conflict  of  modern  thought  furnishes  one  of  the 
most  characteristic  problems  of  to-day.  It  is  the  problem 
of  the  so-called  Philosophy  of  Evolution.  The  empirical  " 
generalization  that  the  whole  life  of  our  planet  is  in  al] 


THE  RISE  OF  THE   DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION.          289 

probability  one  continuous  process^  free  from  unintelli--' 
gible  or  magical  breaks  and  interferences,  is  one  great 
outcome  of  modern  research,  —  an  outcome  inconceivable^ 
except  on  the  basis  of  numerous  presuppositions  which^-- 
philosophy  must  analyze,  but  for  all  that  an  outcome  that  - 
appeals  for  proof  to  the  facts  of  experience,  rather  than 
to  the  romantic  intuitions  of  the  age  of  Schelling.  But 
the  interpretation  of  this  generalization,  —  the  inner  sense 
of  it,  —  what  of  that  ?  Have  we  hereby  banished  ideals 
from  the  world  ?  have  we  really  restored  the  faith  in  the 
rigid  outer  order  of  Spinoza  ?  or  have  we  not  rather,  for 
the  first  time,  got  a  true  empirical  verification  of  the  pre- 
sence of  the  great  active  Spirit  in  his  world  ?  Is  it  the 
continuity,  the  physical  necessity,  the  unalterably  fatal 
law  of  the  process  that  our  science  is  beginning  to  make 
clear  ?  or  is  it  rather  the  immanence  in  nature  of  ideal 
powers,  of  significant  tendencies,  that  from  the  beginning 
so  moulded  the  atoms,  so  predetermined  the  laws  of  their 
mechanism,  so  endowed  them  with  swift  flight  and  with 
close  affinity,  that  the  outcome  of  ages  of  their  motion 
has  been  spiritual,  —  is  it  this  that  we  are  now  discover- 
ing by  our  experience  ?  Here  the  thought  of  our  day 
pauses,  hesitant ;  here  the  spirit  in  which  the  whole  labor 
of  the  century  was  begun  stands  in  conflict  with  the 
spirit  of  positive  and  empirical  science  that  the  century 
has  developed  as  it  has  proceeded. 

But  whatever  is  to  be  the  outcome  of  this  conflict,  let 
me  point  out  to  you  that  at  all  events  those  who  are  now- 
adays accustomed  to  speak  of  a  Philosophy  of  Evolution/ 
ought  to  have  no  doubt  as  to  what  their  expression,  if  it 
is  to  mean  anything,  must  mean.  A  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion may  be,  like  Darwin's  doctrine  of  natural  selection, 
a  purely  empirical  theory,  a  generalization  from  facts 
with  a  use  of  the  postulates  of  science,  and  nothing  more. 
How  nature  came  by  this  seemingly  ideal  character  of 
her  processes,  such  an  empirical  doctrine  need  not  try  to 


290  THE  SPIRIT    OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

explain.  But  a,  philosophy  of  evolution,  if  there  is  ever 
to  be  one,  must  face  just  that  ultimate  question,  Has  the 
world  a  meaning?  and,  as  a  philosophy  of  a  true  evolu- 
tion, must  answer  that  question  in  the  affirmative  ;  for  a 
philosophy,  or  at  all  events  an  affirmative,  a  positive  phi- 
losophy, is,  as  we  have  seen  all  along,  an  effort  to  express, 
and  by  criticism  to  establish,  the  presuppositions  of  the 
age  which  it  reflects  upon.  Now  the  presumption  of  an 
historical  age  is  that  there  is  a  history  embodied  in  the 
known  world,  and  a  philosophy  of  evolution  must  be  an 
effort  to  give  voice  to  this  presupposition.  If  there  is 
anything  true  in  a  philosophy  of  evolution,  then  there  is 
something  more  than  mere  physical  causation,  mere  mech- 
anism in  the  world ;  for  how  there  can  be  history  in  the 
world,  no  causal  explanation,  no  appeal  to  mechanism  as 
such,  can  ever  directly  express.  In  so  far  as  you  find 
mechanism  only  in  the  world,  you  find  neither  growth  nor 
decay ;  you  find  no  story  at  all.  The  return  to  the  outer 
order  in  our  century  has  therefore  in  its  presupposition 
not  been  a  return  to  the  old  outer  order  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  has  been  a  return  to  a  world  pervaded,  as  it 
were,  with  the  spirit  of  idealism.  If  there  is  not  merely 
a  group  of  sciences  having  a  fictitiously  historical  interest, 
but  a  true  evolution,  then  there  are  ideal  interests  ex- 
pressed in  this  outer  order  of  nature,  spiritual  passions 
(to  borrow  Schelling's  romantic  expression)  frozen  into 
this  lava  stream  of  nature's  mechanism.  Those  who  have 
believed  that  the  spirit  of  the  age  of  evolution  removed 
idaals,  removed  teleology  from  the  world,  have,  then, 
failed  to  see  that  the  presupposition  of  our  historical  age, 
ever  since  Kousseau  and  the  romantic  period,  has  been 
that  history  is  worth  studying  for  its  own  sake,  and  that 
therefore  ideals  are  responsible  for  nature's  mechanism. 

But  just  herein,  .you  see,  lies  once  more  the  deepest 
problem  of  recent  philosophy.  The  seventeenth  century, 
before  doubt  and  idealism  came,  used  to  say  :  "  We  know 


THE  RISE  OF   THE  DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION.          291 

that  there  are  rigid  and  necessary  laws  of  nature's  mecha- 
nism ;  and  as  all  is  necessary,  therefore  the  historical  is 
insignificant.  The  world  of  to-day  is  the  world  of  eter- 
nity." But  our  age,  returning  to  a  seemingly  rigid  outer 
order,  returns  with  idealism  in  its  reflective  thought,  with 
spiritual  passion  as  its  deepest  presupposition,  and  insists 
that,  whatever  nature's  mechanism,  there  is  still  no  know-^- 
ledge  so  profound  as  the  knowledge  of  the  history  of 
things.  Yet  how  can  this  insistence  be  defended  ?  The 
doctrine  of  evolution,  I  assert,  is  in  heart  and  essence  the 
child  of  the  romantic  movement  itself.  Can  the  child, 
inheriting  its  mother's  depth  and  longing  for  wisdom, 
defend  this  inheritance  in  this  vast  outer  universe  of  rigid 
order  and  absolute  law  ?  That  is  the  true  problem  of  the 
philosophy  of  evolution.  I  know  many  who  regret  the  ten- 
dency in  our  day  to  apply  the  doctrine  of  the  transforma- 
tion of  species  to  humanity,  who  fear  the  apparently 
materialistic  results  of  the  discovery  that  the  human  mind 
has  grown.  For  my  part  there  lies  in  all  this  discovery 
of  our  day  the  deeply  important  presupposition  that  the 
transition  from  animal  to  man  is  in  fact  really  an  evolu- 
tion, that  is,  a  real  history,  a  process  having  significance. 
If  this  is  in  truth  the  real  interpretation  of  nature,  then 
the  romantic  philosophy  has  not  dreamed  in  vain,  and  the 
outer  order  of  nature  will  embody  once  more  the  life  of  a 
divine  Self. 

v. 

Yet  we  must  not  too  much  anticipate  later  results. 
Presuppositions  are  not  yet  the  philosophy  which  is  to 
establish  them  ;  passions  are  not  yet  proofs.  Let  me  try, 
as  I  close,  to  suggest  something  of  those  attitudes  towards 
the  problems  of  our  day  which  are  now  best  known  and 
most  characteristic.  Thus  I  shall  be  able  to  conclude  our 
historical  sketch,  and  to  pass  to  the  second  and  more  posi- 
tive part  of  our  survey  of  modern  problems. 

Towards  the  vast  world  of  science  with  the  endless  mul« 


292  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

titude  of  its  facts,  collected  as  they  have  been  under  the 
influence  of  the  spirit  that  I  have  been  describing  in  the 
present  lecture,  it  is  possible  to  take  the  attitude  of  de- 
claring that,  whatever  interest  led  to  their  collection,  the 
facts  are  now  so  numerous  and  complex  as  to  exclude 
henceforth  and  forever  any"  attempts  at  a  philosophy. 
The  fantastic  failures  of  the  idealistic  age  may  be  looked 
upon  as  illustrating  the  weakness  of  human  powers.  A 
modest  sense  of  the  puzzling  mystery  of  things  may  re- 
gard as  final  in  Kant's  doctrine  only  its  confession  of 
ignorance  ;  and  may  find  in  the  later  systems  only  ro- 
mances. The  business  of  to-day,  one  may  declare,  is  with 
science,  with  the  world  of  experience,  with  the  facts. 
The  world  in  its  wholeness  is  too  much  for  us.  The  out- 
come of  philosophy  has  been  the  one  lesson  of  the  need  of 
recognizing  our  limitations. 

This  result  of  the  return  to  the  outer  order  is  nowadays 
natural  and  familiar  enough.  In  so  far  as  it  expresses  a 
mere  private  and  personal  unwillingness  on  the  part  of 
many  people  to  undertake  the  philosophical  task,  I  respect 
this  spirit,  and  urge  no  argument  against  those  who  hap- 
pen to  be  possessed  by  it.  Reflection  is  not  a  man's 
whole  business.  Our  modern  world  is  indeed  vast.  There 
is  a  great  diversity  of  gifts  amongst  us.  Many  of  us  are 
better  men  without  philosophy.  Let  such  as  are  so  cling 
to  experience.  I  will  not  molest  them.  These  lectures 
are  not  addressed  to  them. 

I  object  to  this  way  of  looking  at  the  modern  situation 
of  human  thought  only  when  those  who  assume  it  declare 
that  the  history  of  thought  teaches  this  sort  of  resigna- 
tion, or  that  the  problems  and  results  of  modern  science 
demand  it  of  us  in  any  novel  or  peculiar  sense.  On  the 
contrary,  if  ever  there  was  an  age  that  demanded  not  res- 
ignation, but  industry  in  philosophy,  it  is  our  own.  The 
incomplete  results  of  the  previous  periods  of  thought,  the 
wondrous  suggestiveness  of  Kant,  the  marvelous  analyses 


THE   RISE   OF   THE  DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION.  293 

of  self-consciousness,  and  of  its  relation  to  truth,  whereof 
the  idealistic  age  is  full,  this  new  problem  suggested  by 
tluT  doctrine  of  evolution,  —  are  not  all  these  things  a 
challenge  to  our  time,  a  challenge  such  as  previous  ages 
have  never  heard  ?  What  our  age  is  challenged  to  do  is, 
not  to  invent  some  revolutionaiy  novelty  in  philosophy, 
but  to  organize  the  outcome  of  earlier  reflection.  Organ- 
ization —  it  is  the  one  greatest  idea  of  our  time.  Synthe- 
sis —  it  is  the  one  undertaking  of  our  century.  Do  you 
find  a  mass  of  fragmentary  little  states,  spiritually  related 
by  tongue  and  literature,  sundered  by  bitter  fortune,  — 
then  by  blood  and  iron  you  make  them  into  one  empire. 
Is  your  republic  endangered  by  local  jealousies  and  pri- 
vate interests,  —  then  at  the  cost  of  years  of  warfare  you 
force  these  factions  to  know  their  own  brotherhood.  Is 
society  imperiled  by  too  much  individualism,  —  then  your 
loaders  become  filled  with  the  spirit  of  social  organization. 
Everywhere  the  same  spirit  is  abroad.  Shall  thought 
remain  untouched  by  it?  Shall  reflection,  frightened  by 
the  diversity  of  opinions,  refuse  to  attempt  their  synthesis? 
For  what  is  needed,  I  repeat,  is  not  some  new  gospel, 
preached  by  an  angel  from  heaven,  but  a  synthesis  of  the 
truth  that  we  now  have  ready  at  hand.  Schopenhauer 
and  Hegel,  Spinoza  and  Kant,  mechanism  and  teleology, 
nature  and  evolution,  experience  and  reason,  —  these  are 
all,  not  mere  names  for  warring  tendencies,  whose  conflict 
proves  that  all  things  are  and  must  remain  a  mystery  to 
us  men ;  these  stand  rather  for  embodiments  now  of 
this,  now  of  that  deeper  truth.  Their  existence  is,  I  re- 
peat, a  challenge  to  us,  not  to  see  how  much  they  differ, 
but  how  well  they  belong  together.  No  other  age  ever 
had  so  rich  a  suggestion  of  such  a  synthesis  of  truth. 
Can  we  afford  to  neglect  our  opportunity  ? 

It  is  n't  despair,  then,  that  the  complexity  of  modern 
thought  teaches  us.  It  is  rather  the  wondrous  beauty  of 
the  philosophical  problem  of  the  age  that  is  shown  us  by 


294  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

this  very  complexity.  Nor  is  the  return  to  the  outer  order 
necessarily  a  forsaking  of  philosophic  theory  for  experi- 
ence. No,  experience  itself  is  meaningless  without  pre- 
suppositions. Every  one  has  an  unconscious  philosophy. 
Every  one  has  beliefs  about  the  world  as  world,  and  in  its 
wholeness.  One  may  neglect  or  even  hate  a  conscious 
philosophy.  Nobody  is  without  the  faith  that  it  would 
need  a  whole  philosophy  to  make  articulate.  The  ques- 
tion, What  is  experience  ?  was  Kant's  own  question ;  and 
to  that  question  the  whole  idealistic  age  was  a  fragmen- 
tary answer.  In  vain,  then,  do  you  say :  I,  for  my  part, 
hold  fast  by  experience,  and  forsake  theory.  There  is  in 
truth  no  experience  without  theory,  and  philosophy  is 
simply  theory  brought  to  consciousness  of  itself. 

VI. 

But  now,  if,  still  following  the  history  of  current  ten- 
dencies, one  passes  to  a  mention  of  those  thinkers  who, 
recognizing  the  true  situation  of  modern  thought,  and  not 
abhorring  reflection,  have  undertaken  this  great  synthetic 
task  of  philosophy  itself,  and  have  done  so  from  the  mod- 
ern point  of  view,  you  will  at  once  think,  especially  in 
connection  with  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  of  the  name  of 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  You  will  ask  of  me,  at  this  point, 
some  suggestion  of  the  relation  of  this  noteworthy  thinker 
to  the  movement  whose  growth  I  have  been  following. 
The  barest  suggestion,  indeed,  is  all  that  I  can  make. 
Mr.  Spencer  will  be  to  me  here  an  illustration  of  one  way 
of  meeting  the  modern  situation  as  it  has  now  been 
described.  Mr.  Spencer,  as  everybody  who  knows  any- 
thing of  his  career  is  aware,  did  not  wait  for  the  appear- 
ance of  Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Species "  before  seizing 
upon  the  idea  of  his  general  "  Formula  of  Evolution." 
The  thought  that  the  processes  of  nature  are  historical, 
that  the  very  mechanism  of  the  physical  world  is  such  as 
is  bound  to  show  to  the  oulooking  spectator  the  spectacle 


THE  RISE   OF   THE  DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION.          295 

of  a  rhythmic  alternation  of  growth  and  decay,  and  that 
in  this  rhythmic  alternation  all  the  various  histories  of  the 
solar  system,  of  the  earth's  crust,  and  of  the  life  of  the 
animals  and  of  men,  are  contained,  —  this  thought  came 
early  to  the  mind  of  this  singularly  patient  and  many- 
sided  student  of  science  and  of  politics.  During  the  fifties 
he  thought  out  the  main  outlines  of  his  future  system  of 
synthetic  philosophy,  published  the  first  edition  of  his 
"Psychology,"  and  embodied  in  periodical  essays  his 
notion  of  "  Progress,  its  Law  and  Cause,"  as  well  as  the 
application  of  this  notion  to  several  important  problems  of 
natural  history,  of  social  science,  and  of  the  history  of  hu- 
manity. Early  in  the  sixties  his  system  began  to  appear ; 
but  it  was  not  until  after  1870  that  he  won  the  general 
recognition  which  has  made  him,  in  this  country,  in  the 
eyes  of  so  many,  the  one  true  prophet  of  the  philosophy 
of  evolution,  and  that  has  given  him  a  worthy  name  and 
influence  throughout  the  realm  of  European  scientific  in- 
quiry. To-day  his  system  is  still  unfinished.  A  world 
of  new  investigations,  which  he  follows  industriously  but 
without  noteworthy  change  of  his  opinions,  has  grown  up 
about  him,  inviting  him  to  eternally  new  labors,  but 
always  only  confirming  in  his  mind  his  own  convictions. 
He  undertook  long  since  the  task  of  a  Titan.  He  has 
pursued  this  task  for  full  thirty  years  with  the  patience 
of  an  enthusiast.  The  skillful  devotion  of  the  man  is 
unquestionable.  His  value  as  an  awakener  and  organizer 
of  research  is  vast.  What  can  we  say  of  his  place  in  the 
history  of  philosophy  ? 

Mr.  Spencer  stands  in  a  singular  position,  whether  you 
regard  him  as  an  Englishman  or  as  a  philosopher.  Eng- 
lishman he  is,  but  how  unlike  Locke  or  Berkeley,  with 
their  classical  limitations  of  outlook  and  of  inquiry,  with 
their  doubtful  attitude  towards  researches  that  lay  beyond 
the  circle  of  their  immediate  interests,  with  their  unwill- 
ingness to  apply  philosophy  to  more  than  a  few  problems. 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Mr.  Spencer  in  his  position  amongst  English  thinkers  is 
so  far  more  like  Hobbes.  The  whole  range  of  problems 
seems  to  concern  him.  He  attempts  fearlessly  the  most 
stupendous  of  tasks.  He  would  unify  science.  His  pro* 
vince  is  the  world  of  experience  in  its  entirety.  He  is 
fond  of  mentioning  in  the  same  sentence  or  paragraph 
nebula}  and  starfishes,  savages  and  molecules,  the  laws  of 
motion  and  the  institutions  of  Europe.  Nor  is  this  wide 
range  chosen  by  him  because  of  mere  waywardness,  or 
from  the  mere  love  of  variety  in  illustration.  He  men- 
tions all  these  things  because  he  seems  to  himself  to  have 
a  formula  for  them.  Unlike  Hobbes  he  is,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  his  fondness  for  the  letter  of  this  formula  itself,  in 
his  fearlessness  about  the  use  of  highly  abstract  phrases, 
in  his  endless  repetitions  and  illustrations  of  a  few  princi- 
pal aspects  of  his  fundamental  thought.  All  this,  I  say, 
this  combination  of  universality  of  purpose  with  abstract- 
ness  of  expression,  is  an  un-English  trait  in  Mr.  Spencer. 
It  allies  him  so  far  with  Hegel,  and  with  the  other  inven- 
tors of  world-embracing  formulas.  An  Englishman  who 
writes  on  philosophy  usually  loves  the  Socratic  fashion  of 
posing  as  a  plain  man  of  simple  undertakings  and  of 
obvious  ideas.  Mr.  Spencer  speaks  rather  as  one  having 
authority.  If  you  criticise  him,  he  replies  that  you  have 
failed  to  comprehend  the  subtlety  and  the  many-sidedness 
of  his  thought.  He  does  not  reply  as  Socrates  or  as 
Berkeley  would  have  done,  that  it  is  the  critic  who  is  too 
subtle  and  artificial  to  grasp  the  concrete  ideas  of  a  plain 
man.  On  the  contrary,  Mr.  Spencer,  more  after  the 
fashion  of  Hegel,  knows  that  his  formula  is  only  for 
trained  minds,  like  his  own,  for  men  who,  like  himself, 
have  lived  long  amidst  deep  contemplations,  and  who  are 
accustomed  to  world-compelling  synthetic  thought.  In 
this  synthetic  character  of  his  thought,  again,  that  seems 
to  give  him  a  place  amongst  the  characteristic  thinkers  of 
this  our  third  period  of  modern  philosophy.  As  we  have 


THE   RISE  OF  THE  DOCTRINE  OF   EVOLUTION.          297 

now  repeatedly  seen,  the  great  business  of  modern  thought- 
is  the  discovery  of  the  unity  of  apparently  diverse  lines  of 
investigation,  the  reconciliation  of  seemingly  hopeless  con- 
tradictions, the  unification  of  the  world  which  anarchical 
passion  and  analytic  reflection  have  conspired  to  rend 
asunder.  And  Mr.  Spencer  undertakes  everywhere  to  be 
a  reconciler,  an  unifier,  one  who  harmonizes  through  syn- 
thesis, and  who  brings  to  light  oppositions  only  to  enrich 
thought  by  suggesting  their  organic  unity.  Science  and 
religion,  empiricism  and  rationalism,  Locke  and  Kant, 
egoism  and  altruism,  mechanism  and  evolution,  nature 
and  history,  —  such  are  some  of  the  seemingly  opposing 
forces  that  he  would  critically  reunite,  even  in  the  act  of 
dwelling  upon  their  warfare.  His  world,  too,  is  rent  by 
great  conflicts ;  but  its  unity  is  to  be  more  than  its  con- 
flicts. Mr.  Spencer's  great  popular  reputation  is  largely 
due  to  this  organizing  spirit  that  everywhere  shows  itself 
in  his  writings.  That,  again,  is  why  young  men  love  him 
so  intensely.  And  their  love  is  so  far  well  suggested  by 
his  imposing  dignity  of  enterprise.  His  categories,  mean- 
while, look  so  much  more  empirical  and  concrete  than 
Hegel's,  or  than  those  of  other  similar  philosophic  unifiers. 
The  redistribution  of  matter  and  motion  is  so  much  more 
scientific-sounding  a  phrase  for  the  description  of  the  pro- 
cess of  nature  than  is  Hegel's  notion  of  the  absolute.  The 
passage  from  the  indefinite  and  homogeneous  to  the  defi- 
nite and  heterogeneous,  which  Mr.  Spencer  makes  the 
type  of  all  cosmical  evolution,  is  so  much  more  readily 
conceivable  than  is  Hegel's  Negativitdt.  But  one  thus 
indeed  forgets,  as  one  reads,  that  over  every  statement  of 
Mr.  Spencer's  about  the  outer  world  broods  that  dim  and 
shadowy  Unknowable  of  his,  whose  mystery  gives  to  every 
assertion  about  the  unity  of  its  own  processes  an  air  of 
doubt  and  of  uuintelligibility.  In  the  same  breath  Mr. 
Spencer,  in  fact,  seems  to  assure  you  that  he  knows  all  and 
nothing  about  this  unity  of  scientific  truth.  The  real  outer 


298  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

world  is  according  to  him  this  Unknowable  itself.  The 
Absolute  is  an  impenetrable  mystery.  Consciousness  can- 
not transcend  its  own  boundaries.  The  limitation  of  know- 
ledge is  thus  for  Mr.  Spencer  the  tragic  defeat  of  the  high- 
est purpose  of  knowledge.  Human  thought  will  never 
reach  its  real  goal,  and  that,  not  because  human  thought  is 
merely  unfinished,  but  because  genuine  knowledge  of  outer 
truth  is  in  its  very  essence  inconceivable,  contradictory, 
hopeless.  Yet  all  the  while  Mr.  Spencer  has  that  univer- 
sal formula,  namely,  his  law  of  evolution.  And  this  for- 
mula shall  be  true,  and  true  about  objective  nature,  about  a 
real  world,  about  something  that  does  transcend  conscious- 
ness. Idealistic  constructions  of  the  absolute  shall  be 
impossible,  just  because  the  absolute  is  unknowable. 
But  unification  of  science,  an  empirical  construction  of  an 
universally  valid  and  objective  law,  shall  be  possible, 
although  the  outer  truth  is  essentially  unknowable. 

This  well-known  paradox  of  Mr.  Spencer's  is  extremely 
characteristic  3f  the  halting  attitude  of  much  contempo- 
rary thought.  As  for  the  Unknowable  itself,  we  shall 
have  something  to  say  of  it  hereafter,  in  the  second  part 
of  our  course.  For  the  present  one  may  note,  as  an 
historical  fact,  that  both  doubters  and  mystery-mongers 
(of  whom  our  time  is  full)  often  take  an  almost  equal 
delight  in  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of  the  Unknowable :  the 
one  class  because  they  perceive  that  he,  too,  doubts,  the 
other  class  because  they  find  in  Mr.  Spencer's  vague 
speech,  as  to  this  matter,  words  that  arouse  their  most 
religiously  unutterable  longings  and  croonings.  Kant's 
things  in  themselves  were,  indeed,  somewhat  similar  to 
this  Unknowable ;  yet  they  were  at  least  sharply  distin- 
guished from  the  knowable  phenomena.  All  that  Kant 
ever  pretended,  even  provisionally  or  partially,  to  "  unify  " 
was  the  world  of  the  inner  life.  But  in  Mr.  Spencer's 
doctrine  it  is  our  knowledge  of  the  outer  world  which  is 
to  be  "  unified ;  "  and  yet  this  outer,  as  such,  cannot  truljf 


THE  RISE   OF   THE   DOCTRINE   OF   EVOLUTION.          299 

be  known  save  as  to  the  bare  fact  of  its  existence.  The 
union  of  knowable  and  unknowable  in  Mr.  Spencer's  sys- 
tem is  thus  a  painfully  corrupt  one.  "  Reconciled  "  they 
are  in  the  system  much  as  science  and  religion  are  recon- 
ciled at  the  outset  of  the  "  First  Principles."  In  case  of 
most  of  Mr.  Spencer's  "  reconciliations,"  the  opposing 
interests  are,  in  fact,  first  more  or  less  developed,  and  then 
deliberately  ignored.  The  reconciled  terms  and  interests 
enter  into  the  reconciling  formula,  much  as  the  dead  in 
Job's  lamentation  enter  Sheol,  and  find  peace :  "  The 
small  and  the  great  are  there,  and  the  servant  is  free 
from  his  master."  "The  prisoners  rest  together,  they 
hear  not  the  voice  of  the  oppressor."  "  The  wicked  cease 
from  troubling  and  the  weary  are  at  rest."  So,  I  say,  are 
the  great  interests  of  humanity,  the  great  problems  of 
philosophy,  the  concerns  of  science,  and  the  passions  of 
religion,  at  rest  in  the  dim  recesses  of  the  Spencerian 
formulas. 

One  of  the  most  noteworthy  and  valuable  features  of 
Mr.  Spencer's  thought,  meanwhile,  in  its  influence  upon 
our  age,  is  seen  in  the  curious  fact  of  the  actual  fruitful- 
ness  for  modern  discussion  of  some  of  his  very  vaguest 
formulas.  Mr.  Spencer  lives  in  a  time  when  no  accent  of 
the  Holy  Ghost  fails  to  reach  the  ear  of  some  breathless 
listener.  So  hungry  is  this  our  modern  world  for  truth 
that  the  least  hint  suggests  to  it  a  feast  of  insight.  And 
that  is  why  Mr.  Spencer's  comprehensive  syntheses  have 
been  so  significant  for  many  minds,  and,  despite  their 
vagueness,  will  have  a  part  in  the  outcome  of  human  phi- 
losophy. The  whole  doctrine  of  Mr.  Spencer  remains,  to 
my  mind,  a  vast  programme  of  a  philosophy  of  evolution. 
The  author's  idea,  namely,  to  give  a  general  account  of 
the  nature  of  the  historical  process  as  such,  is  a  great 
idea.  I  do  not  find  in  his  actual  formula  anything  at  all 
successful  or  satisfying.  The  processes  of  differentiation 
and  of  integration,  which  he  tries  to  describe  and  unite  in 


300  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

this  formula,  are  ill  universalized  through  his  famous  defi* 
nition  of  evolution.  Not  all  historical  processes  are  de- 
scribed by  even  these  abstract  terms.  Still  less  are  all 
the  processes  that  his  formula  includes  historical  in  their 
nature.  But  still  the  thought  of  the  whole,  which  is  the 
thought  that  the  world  of  natural  mechanism  must  be 
shown  to  be  also,  in  another  aspect  of  its  nature,  histori- 
cal, is  a  deep  and  thoroughly  modern  thought,  and  that 
is  the  thought  which  I  believe  to  be  the  outcome  of  the 
whole  work  of  the  century. 

VII. 

Outside  of  the  circle  of  the  special  teachings  of  Mr. 
Spencer  we  find,  meanwhile,  a  group  of  doctrines  which 
make  a  more  or  less  serious  effort  at  being  philosophical, 
and  which  retain  of  idealism  only  a  few  fragmentary  ele- 
ments. But  these  doctrines  are  withal  so  significant  of 
our  age  and  of  its  problems,  that  I  should  do  ill,  even  in 
this  fragmentary  sketch,  if  I  wholly  failed  to  characterize 
them.  I  allude  to  the  doctrines  best  known  by  the  very 
general  epithet,  Monistic.  In  them  the  idealistic  tradi- 
tion still  lives,  but  in  an  unconscious  fashion.  The  coy 
doctrine  of  the  world  as  spirit,  pursued  too  hotly  by 
former  lovers,  has  been  metamorphosed,  and  now  survives 
in  a  sort  of  Daphne-like  slumber,  under  such  names  as 
the  Mind -Stuff  theory,  or  the  doctrine  of  the  Double 
Aspect.  Readers  of  modern  discussion  are  not  unfa- 
miliar with  such  statements  as  that  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion has  taught  us  the  "  Oneness  of  all  Existence ; "  this 
oneness  meaning  that  the  world  is  somehow  made  of  one 
stuff,  and  that  this  stuff  is  at  once  essentially  physical 
and  essentially  mental  in  its  qualities.  Schopenhauer, 
whose  real  system  was  at  heart  a  much  more  subtle  and 
profound  doctrine  than  much  of  this  modern  monism, 
used  phrases  that  already  suggest  its  formulas.  The  will, 
he  used  to  say,  is  just  nature's  physical  causation  "  seen 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION.          301 

from  within ; "  while  the  laws  of  nature  are  the  will  "  seen 
from  without."  Using  this  phrase,  and  avoiding  Scho- 
penhauer's own  systematic  context  for  the  phrase,  many 
recent  thinkers  have  sought  to  reconcile  science  and  phi- 
losophy after  much  the  following  fashion :  — 

Nature,  they  say,  shows  us  material  processes,  subject 
to  fixed  law.  /  Matter  is  known  to  be  real,  for  experience 
tells  us  so.  The  idealistic  views  of  post-Kantian  thought 
are  mere  romances.  Kant's  own  subjectivism  was  unsci- 
entific. The  real  world  first  appears  as  the  physical  world, 
full  of  matter  in  motion.  But  now  what  is  this  matter 
in  motion  ?  Experience  makes  clear  that  in  certain  very 
highly  complex  organisms,  and,  in  particular,  in  the  nerve- 
centres  of  these  organisms,  certain  masses  of  matter  exhibit 
mental  characteristics,  so  that  here  molecular  motion  is 
accompanied  by  consciousness.  The  more  highly  organ- 
ized the  nerve-centres  in  question,  the  higher  the  con- 
sciousness ;  the  simpler  the  organism,  the  simpler  the 
consciousness,  until,  low  in  the  scale,  we  come  to  what 
seem  to  be  unconscious  organisms,  and  lower  still,  to  what 
seems  to  be  inanimate  matter.  The  doctrine  of  evolution 
teaches  us  that  the  transition  from  lower  to  higher  has 
been,  so  far  as  the  material  processes  are  concerned,  a 
continuous  process.  The  more  complex  has  evolved  from 
the  simpler.  The  organisms  that  possess  consciousness 
are  the  offspring  of  an  ancestry  which  in  earlier  stages  of 
evolution  would  have  seemed  to  possess  none.  Moreover, 
each  conscious  individual,  in  his  growth  from  the  egg, 
passes  from^the  condition  of  a  little  mass  of  protoplasm 
to  the  condition  of  a  knowing  and  thinking  being.  As 
matter  organizes,  mind  gives  evidence  of  its  presence. 
As  the  brain  disintegrates  in  old  age  or  in  disease,  mind 
alters  or  disappears.  What  now  is  the  meaning,  the  out- 
come, of  all  these  facts  ?  Is  it  not  this  ?  As  the  material 
elements  of  the  brain  existed  before  the  brain,  and  came 
together  to  form  it,  so  the  elements  of  the  mind  existed 


302  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

apart  from  and  before  the  conscious  mind  itself,  and  by 
their  synthesis  have  produced  it.  And  what,  once  more, 
can  this  mean  ?  Does  it  not  signify  that  the  elements  of 
the  mind  and  the  elements  of  the  brain  are  not  two  sorts 
of  substance,  but  one ;  that  the  consciousness  is,  as  it 
were,  only  the  inner  aspect  of  that  which,  seen  from  with- 
out, appears  as  the  brain ;  and  that  each  atom  of  the 
brain  is  only  the  representative,  in  the  world  of  physics,  of 
that  which,  otherwise  viewed,  is  in  its  essence  an  element 
of  the  mind  ?  The  world  that  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
shows  us  is,  in  fact,  a  world  of  one  continuous  process. 
At  one  end  of  this  process  we  find  what  seems  to  be  dead 
matter.  At  the  other  end  we  find,  say  in  our  own  inner 
life,  what  seems  to  be  pure  mind.  How  can  one  process 
show  such  different  things  ?  Yet  the  continuity  of  the 
process,  its  persistence  through  all  the  ages  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  our  planet,  the  absence  of  proof  of  external  inter- 
ference, all  these  indicate  that  there  must  have  been  one 
real  stuff  present  throughout,  despite  the  variety  of  its 
manifestations.  The  various  manifestations  must  then  be 
only  in  seeming  and  not  in  ultimate  foundation  various. 
The  so-called  dead  matter  was  always  in  essence  mental. 
The  consciousness  known  to  us  in  our  inner  life  has  that 
physical  aspect  which  the  observer  calls  our  brain.  The 
same  substance  it  is,  then,  that  "  seen  from  within  "  ap- 
pears as  mind,  and  that  "  seen  from  without "  is  called 
matter.  / 

A  well-known  passage  of  M.  Taine's  book  on  "  The  In- 
tellect "  uses,  to  state  this  doctrine,  the  figure  of  a  text 
and  interlinear  translation,  which,  in  the  book  of  nature, 
appear  in  some  places  side  by  side,  as  the  two  series :  the 
mental  and  the  physical  phenomena  of  the  world.  In 
some  regions  the  text  only  appears  to  the  observer  (as 
each  one  of  us,  and  he  only,  knows  his  own  inner  life)  ; 
while  elsewhere,  as  in  our  observation  of  "  dead  "  matter, 
only  the  translation  appears  to  us,  not  the  text.  The  in* 


THE  RISE  OF   THE  DOCTRINE   OF  EVOLUTION.          303 

ference  is  that,  mutilated  as  our  copy  of  the  text  may  be, 
both  text  and  translation  are  meant  in  the  original  of  our 
book  to  be  parallel,  correspondent,  and,  in  deepest  sense, 
one.  This,  then,  is  the  theory  of  Monism,  as  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  has  suggested  it  to  many  recent  thinkers. 

In  further  development  the  expressions  of  the  doctrine 
differ  widely.  The  lamented  Clifford,  in  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  of  his  essays,  that  on  "  Mind-Stuff,"  gave  to 
modern  monism  one  of  its  most  suggestive  formulations. 
Independently,  Dr.  Morton  Prince,  of  Boston,  in  a  book 
on  "  The  Nature  of  Mind  and  Human  Automatism," 
reached,  a  number  of  years  since,  the  same  thought.  So 
stated,  monism  declares  that  the  real  stuff  of  the  world 
is  not  an  unknown  somewhat,  an  a?,  that  when  viewed  as 
we  view  our  own  states  appears  as  mind,  and  that  when 
viewed  from  without  appears  as  matter.  On  the  con- 
trary, this  real  stuff  of  things  is,  for  Clifford  and  for  Dr. 
Prince,  nothing  but  mind  itself^  known  to  us  directly  and 
in  its  true  essence  when  we  know  our  own  feelings,  known 
to  us  indirectly  and  obscurely  when  it  is  formed  of  the 
feelings  that  are  not  ours,  and  that,  affecting  our  feelings 
from  without,  are  represented  therein  by  our  ideas  of 
material  things  beyond  us.  The  world  is  thus  in  reality 
mind,  but  not  of  necessity  conscious  mind,  rather  only  a 
vast  congeries  of  elementary  feelings,  out  of  which,  when 
they  come  into  close  relations  to  one  another,  as  they  do 
in  our  organisms,  complex  mental  life,  and  finally  con- 
sciousness, can  be  and  is  made.  The  process  of  evolution 
is  the  process  of  the  organization  of  this  mind-stuff.  The 
laws  of  nature's  mechanism  are  the  laws  of  the  relations 
of  mind-stuff  atoms ;  and  there  is  but  this  one  stuff  in 
all  things. 

Other  lovers  of  this  modern  monism  are  not  always  so 
simple  in  their  formulations.  To  many  the  truth  of  the 
doctrine  lies  in  the  thought  that  matter  and  mind  are  sim- 
ply diverse  aspects  of  one  ultimate  substantial  stuff.  But 


804  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

what  this  is,  conscious  or  unconscious,  feeling  or  not-feel- 
ing, we  are  not  to  know.  The  true  stuff  is  an  x  with  two 
faces,  a  substance  more  like  Spinoza's,  whose  two  attri- 
butes, material  and  physical,  we  comprehend  by  experi- 
ence, but  whose  essence  is  only  made  articulate  for  us  in 
terms  of  these  its  attributes. 

Such  is  a  suggestion  of  this,  one  of  the  best-known  ten- 
dencies of  recent  speculation.  You  see  its  tentative  and 
empirical  character ;  you  see  its  close  relation  to  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution  ;  you  see  also  how  far  it  is  from  meet- 
ing the  critical  requirements  that,  since  Kant,  are  neces- 
sarily made  of  a  philosophy.  This  naive  acceptance  of 
the  possibility  that  out  of  a  mass  of  feelings  you  can  build 
up  a  self,  this  faith  that  feelings  can  somehow  "  come  to- 
gether "  or  "  organize  themselves,"  when  we  know  of  no 
such  thing  in  experience  as  a  loose  feeling  out  of  organ- 
ization at  all,  or  apart  from  the  unity  of  a  self,  this  belief 
in  the  "  oneness  "  of  things  on  the  basis  of  an  uncriticised 
experience,  —  all  these  things  make  modern  empirical 
monism  rather  a  suggestion  than  a  philosophy.  In  some 
ways,  as  you  will  later  see,  I  prize  it  highly  and  make  use 
of  its  insight.  I  cannot  rest  content  with  it. 

VIII. 

Herewith  ends  my  sketch  of  the  rise  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution.  Of  the  positive  significance  of  the  doctrine 
for  philosophy,  a  later  discussion  must  say  something.  And 
herewith,  as  sometimes  before  in  my  lectures,  I  lay  aside 
the  attitude  of  the  mere  chronicler ;  only  this  time  I  lay 
it  aside  finally  and  altogether.  We  have  traveled  a  long 
road  in  company  ;  we  have  now,  at  last,  reached  the  prob- 
lems of  the  present  day.  Heretofore  I  have  tried  to  tell 
a  story,  —  in  my  own  words  indeed,  generally  with  my 
own  illustrations,  often  in  so  untechnical  a  fashion  as  to 
run  the  risk  of  leaving  my  author  sadly  misunderstood  ; 
but  always  with  a  desire  to  let  the  history  in  some  fashion 
unfold  its  own  inner  meaning,  display  its  own  continuity, 


THE  RISE  OF  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION. 

and  furnish  its  own  criticism  of  the  errors  and  partial 
insights  which  we  have  encountered.  You  have  seen 
throughout,  I  suppose,  where  my  sympathies  have  been  ly- 
ing ;  at  the  outset  I  confessed  to  you  the  nature  of  my  own 
philosophical  creed ;  and  on  several  occasions,  especially 
in  recent  lectures,  I  have  freely  supplemented  history  by 
personal  expressions  of  opinion.  But  from  this  time  forth 
I  am  no  longer  to  be  a  chronicler  who  frequently  criti- 
cises, but  a  student  who  risks  his  own  positive  creed  for 
whatever  it  may  prove  to  be  worth.  The  substance  of  this 
creed  I  shall  in  the  concluding  lectures  suggest,  with  spe- 
cial reference  to  the  point  that  we  have  now  reached  in 
our  study.  I  shall  try  to  make  my  doctrine  the  legitimate 
outcome  of  the  reflective  process  that  I  have  been  de- 
scribing to  you.  I  am,  as  you  now  know,  an  idealist.  I 
find  Kant's  analysis  of  our  knowledge  in  its  essence  the 
true  one.  Kant  erred  chiefly  in  what  he  omitted  to  ana- 
lyze, and  in  his  assumption  of  those  useless  things  in 
themselves.  As  far  as  his  deeper  study  of  the  inner  life 
of  the  intellect  went,  he  was  on  his  own  ground,  and  he 
knew  it  wonderfully  well,  for  all  his  burden  of  technical 
subtleties  and  for  all  his  pedantic  schematism.  /  He  held 
that  space  and  time  are  mental.  To  my  mind  this  is  un- 
questionable, i  He  held  that  all  judgment  is  essentially 
only  an  appeal  to  my  own  deeper  Self,  and  that  all  know- 
ledge depends  on  my  unity  with  my  deeper  Self.  This 
seems  to  me  the  profoundest  truth  of  philosophy.  What 
Kant  did  not  make  clear  was  what  this,  my  deeper  Self, 
is.  It  certainly  is  n't  my  empirically  conscious  self.  It 
certainly  is  n't  the  person  called  by  my  individual  name. 
I  find  in  the  later  idealists  many  suggestions  as  to  what 
this  deeper  Self  is.  I  am  very  fond,  as  you  have  seen,  of 
Hegel's  tragic  but  highly  vital  formula  for  the  paradox 
of  consciousness,  the  struggle  of  self-knowledge  and  self- 
mastery,  as  the  very  life  of  this  passionate  deeper  Self. 
I  do  not,  however,  think  that  Hegel  has  told  the  whole 
truth  about  the  Self.  I  find  great  interest  in  saying,  with 


806  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

Schopenhauer,  that  to  know  the  Self  we  must  first  watch  it 
as  it  plays  the  world-game,  not  as  if  the  facts  of  the  world 
were  ever  really  external  to  thought,  but  because  the 
deeper  Self,  although  one,  needs  an  infinity  of  sense-facts 
to  express  its  will,  and  writes  its  ideas  in  a  vast  hiero- 
glyph, whose  characters  we  call  experience.  Hence  it  is 
that  I  love  to  study  science.  And  when  I  study  science 
I  do  so  naively,  submissively,  straightforwardly,  just  as  i£ 
the  atoms  and  the  suns  and  the  milky-ways,  the  brains  and 
the  nerve-cells  and  the  reflex  mechanisms,  were  all  things 

*  o 

in  themselves.  They  are  n't  things  in  themselves ;  they 
are  mere  manifestations  of  the  Self.  But  I  must  for  this 
very  reason  accept  them  as  they  come.  Nor  do  I  try,  as 
the  romanticists  did,  to  find  obvious  symbolic  interpre- 
tations for  hastily  recorded  facts  of  sense  before  cau- 
tious science  has  scrutinized  these  facts  thoroughly.  I 
have  confidence  enough  in  the  depth  of  meaning  that  the 
Self  has  to  embody  in  the  world,  not  to  try  to  guess  this 
meaning  of  its  hieroglyph  before  a  good  deal  thereof  has 
been  empirically  examined.  I  do  not  grow  restive  in  lis- 
tening to  the  story  of  evolution,  merely  because  I  am 
well  aware  that  the  whole  temporal  view  of  things  is 
largely  illusory,  and  that  the  true  Self,  far  from  being 
subject  to  time,  creates  time.  I  rather  delight  in  this 
craft  whereby  the  Self  thus  hides  its  true  nature  in  ener- 
getic nebulous  masses  and  in  flying  meteors,  pretends  to 
be  absent  from  the  inorganic  world,  pretends  to  have  de- 
scended from  relatives  of  the  anthropoid  apes,  pretends, 
in  short,  to  be  bounded  in  all  sorts  of  nutshells ;  yes, 
plays  hide  and  seek  amongst  the  aeons  of  forgotten  time, 
when  this  planet  was  not,  and  demurely  insists  that  with- 
out phosphorus  it  could  not  possibly  have  learned  how  to 
think.  The  Self  has  its  comedies  as  well  as  its  tragedies ; 
and  these  comedies  are  as  far  from  being  mere  farces  as 
the  tragedies  are  from  being  the  mere  horror-plays  at 
which  Schopenhauer's  saints  turned  pale,  until  they  grew 
ineffectively  holy,  and  finally  vanished.  No,  the  com- 


THE  RISE   OF  THE  DOCTRINE   OF  EVOLUTION.          307 

edies  are  as  deep  as  the  tragedies.  The  Self  is  as  truly 
present  in  evolution  as  he  is  in  sin  and  in  ignorance. 
These  are  the  World-Spirit's  garments  that  we  see  him  by. 
Only  we  must  see  patiently,  watching  every  fold  and  lis- 
tening to  every  rustle  of  the  garment ;  for  behind  this 
garment  stirs  the  infinite  life,  and  to  each  one  of  us 
philosophy  says,  That  art  Thou.  It  is  only  after  a  pa- 
tient scientific  scrutiny  has  revealed,  as  is  the  case  with 
the  doctrine  of  evolution,  a  vast  unity  in  a  long  series  of- 
phenomena ;  a  growth  like  this  which  links  civilized  to  sav- 
age man ;  and  savage  man  to  an  animal  ancestry ;  and  the 
animal  ancestry  to  unicellular  organisms  ;  and  these  to  the- 
inorganic  matter  of  a  primitive  earth-crust ;  and  this  crust- 
to  an  antecedent  fluid  earth-ball,  glowing,  and  parting 
with  its  bulky  satellite,  the  moon \  and  this  glowing  ball  to 
a  primitive  nebula  ;  and  perhaps  this  nebula  to  a  previous 
manifold  streaming  of  multitudinously  clashing  meteors,'"" 
—  it  is  only  then,  I  say,  when  such  a  book  as  this  splen- 
did history  of  life  lies  open  before  us,  only  partly  deci- 
phered, but  still  suggestively  grasped  in  its  magnificent 
outlines,  daily  more  clearly  read  by  science,  that  we  have 
a  right  to  ask :  Who,  then,  is  this  Self,  and  what  man- 
ner of  life  is  this  he  writes  in  this  book,  itself  merely  a 
waif  from  the  lost  tales  of  endless  time,  just  as  the  end- 
less time  also  is  merely  an  illusory  form  wherein  the  Self 
is  pleased  to  embody  and  manifest  this  truth  ?  Its  illu- 
sory form  is  not  wholly  an  illusion.  For  the  Self  is  all 
that  is,  and  his  world  is  the  chosen  outcome  of  his  eter- 
nal reality.  Beyond  all  these  illusions  must  lie  a  mean- 
ing deeper  than  we  have  ever  yet  comprehended,  higher 
than  our  thought  will  soon  reach.  What  fragment,  then, 
of  the  meaning  does  the  story  of  evolution  convey  ?  _To 
give  that  question  a  precise  definition  and  to  risk  a  sharp 
answer,  to  make  this  answer  less  mystical  and  more  con- 
crete than  the  one  now  suggested,  and  to  develop  before 
you  something  of  its  proof,  will  be  my  business  in  the 
remaining  lectures. 


PART  n. 

SUGGESTIONS  OF  DOCTRINE. 


LECTURE  X. 

NATURE  AND  EVOLUTION;  THE  OUTER  WORLD  AND  rrs 

PARADOX. 

/ 

WE  begin  herewith  the  task  of  thinking  for  ourselves 
concerning  the  problems  of  philosophy.  We  shall  have 
learned  little  from  the  preceding  historical  discussions,  if 
they  have  not  strongly  suggested  to  us  that  the  world  of 
truth  must  be  something  very  unlike  the  naive  notions 
of  its  nature  that  our  primitive  consciousness  gives  us. 
Empirical  science  is  full  of  romantic  surprises ;  but  phi- 
losophy has  shown  itself  to  be  far  more  so.  Copernicus 
transformed  the  universe  for  the  natural  man ;  but  Kant's 
"  Copernican  discovery  "  suggested  a  far  more  wondrous 
transformation.  Our  own  work  we  have  defined  in  ad- 
vance as  an  effort  to  bring  into  synthesis  the  thoughts 
that  the  history  of  modern  philosophy  has  suggested  to 
us.  Following,  then,  in  the  paths  of  Kant  and  of  his 
successors,  we  shall  not  expect  to  get  glimpses  of  less 
marvelous  things  than  they  beheld.  What  we  desire  is 
that  these  insights  of  ours  should  be  reasonable,  and 
should  be  adjusted  to  the  facts  of  life  and  of  nature. 

i. 

It  is  the  world  of  the  outer  order  in  which  our  histori- 
cal studies  have  left  us.  The  idealistic  interpretation  of 
this  world  that  I  suggested  as  I  closed  the  last  lecture 
\rill  not  at  first  sight  appear  to  you  more  than  a  mystical 
romance.  Let  it  pass,  for  the  moment,  as  such.  I  shall 
not  here  begin  with  it ;  I  shall  begin  with  the  assumption 
of  realistic  science,  with  the  hypothesis  of  our  own  age, 


812  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

namely,  that  there  is  a  real  world,  which  our  senses  more 
or  less  truly  perceive,  which  a  well-guarded  experience 
can  fruitfully  investigate,  and  which  our  natural  science 
has  been  learning  in  some  measure  to  comprehend.  This 
assumption  is  one  presupposition  of  our  age.  We  shall 
study  it  as  critically  as  we  can.  If  it  needs  a  peculiarly 
cautious  scrutiny,  if  it  lacks  in  any  sense  foundation,  or 
if  it  must  be  transformed  before  it  can  be  accepted,  we 
shall  hope  to  discover  the  fact  in  the  course  of  our 
analysis. 

That,  once  granting  the  foregoing  presupposition,  the 
reflection  of  a  metaphysician  should  have  any  rights  as 
against  the  stupendous  acquisitions  of  the  sciences  of  ex- 
perience, would  seem  at  first  glance  absurd  enough,  were 
it  not  that  the  highest  flights  of  science  are  precisely  the 
ones  that,  to  reflective  persons,  are  always  most  suggestive 
of  the  need  of  a  philosophy.  At  the  close  of  the  remark- 
able address  of  the  president  of  the  British  Association 
at  Cardiff  (delivered  in  August,  1891),  I  find  noteworthy 
words,  concluding  a  presentation  of  the  recent  marvels  of 
the  progress  of  astronomy  :  — 

"  Astronomy,  the  oldest  of  the  sciences,"  says  Dr.  Hug- 
gins,  "  has  more  than  renewed  her  youth.  At  no  time  in 
the  past  has  she  been  so  bright  with  unbounded  aspira- 
tions and  hopes.  Never  were  her  temples  so  numerous, 
nor  the  crowd  of  her  votaries  so  great.  .  .  .  Happy  is  the 
lot  of  those  who  are  still  on  the  eastern  side  of  life's  meri- 
dian. .  .  .  Since  the  time  of  Newton  our  knowledge  of 
the  phenomena  of  nature  has  wonderfully  increased,  but 
man  asks,  perhaps  more  earnestly  now  than  in  his  days, 
What  is  the  ultimate  reality  behind  the  reality  of  the  per- 
ceptions ?  Are  they  only  the  pebbles  of  the  beach  with 
which  we  have  been  playing?  Does  not  the  ocean  of 
ultimate  reality  and  truth  lie  beyond  ?  " 

Let  these  words  of  Dr.  Huggins  be  the  text  of  what  is 
immediately  to  follow.  The  more  one  becomes  absorbed 


NATURE   AND   EVOLUTION.  313 

in  the  study  of  the  wonders  of  nature,  the  nearer  must 
lie  the  thought,  that  these  things  are  not  what  they  seem ; 
that  space  and  time,  and  matter  and  motion,  and  life  and 
our  human  consciousness,  are  but  the  show,  the  finite  em- 
bodiment, the  temporal  manifestation,  of  a  deeper  truth. 
If  this  world  of  experience  is  indeed  real,  its  reality  must 
be  far  prof ounder  than  our  experience.  May  not  an  analy- 
sis of  the  conditions  of  experience  suggest  to  us  wherein 
lies  this  profounder  actuality,  behind  the  show,  and  yet 
incorporated  in  it  ? 

This  world  of  scientific  realism  is  first  of  all  a  world 
in  space  and  in  time.  Space  and  time  are  themselves,  as 
Kant  has  shown  us,  such  puzzling  conditions  of  natural 
law  and  of  human  knowledge,  that  we  should  run  the 
risk  of  complicating  hopelessly  our  inquiry  if  we  here 
already  dwelt  afresh  upon  their  paradoxes.  Let  us  post- 
pone such  a  consideration  until  later ;  let  us  look  rather 
at  the  contents  of  the  space  world,  as  experience  shows 
them  to  us.  In  space  we  find  the  universe  of  the  stars 
and  the  nebulae,  as  the  world  wherein  occur  all  the 
changes  that  fall  within  our  ken.  These  changes,  as 
physical  science  knows  them,  are,  to  use  the  well-known 
phrase,  "redistributions"  of  matter  and  of  energy.  So 
far  as  we  know,  neither  matter  nor  energy  is  ever  altered 
in  quantity.  It  is  their  distribution,  the  form  of  the 
physical  world,  which  changes.  As  for  the  general  ex- 
tent and  character  of  these  changes,  the  astronomer  tells 
us  (to  quote  once  more  from  Dr.  Huggins's  address) 
something  of  the  following  nature  :  — 

"  The  heavens  are  richly  but  very  irregularly  inwrought 
with  stars ;  the  brighter  stars  cluster  into  well-known 
groups  upon  a  background  formed  of  an  eulacement  of 
streams  and  convoluted  windings  and  interwined  spirals 
of  fainter  stars,  which  becomes  richer  and  more  intricate 
in  the  irregularly  rifted  zone  of  the  Milky  Way. 
;  "  We  who  form  part  of  the  emblazonry  can  see  only 


814  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

the  design  distorted  and  confused ;  here  crowded,  there 
scattered,  at  another  place  superposed.  The  groupings 
due  to  our  position  are  mixed  up  with  those  which  are 
real. 

"  Can  we  suppose  that  each  luminous  point  has  no  rela- 
tion to  the  others  near  it  than  the  accidental  neighborship 
of  grains  of  sand  upon  the  shore,  or  particles  of  the  wind- 
blown dust  of  the  desert  ?  Surely  every  star,  from  Sirius 
and  Vega  down  to  each  grain  of  the  light  dust  of  the 
Milky  Way,  has  its  present  place  in  the  heavenly  pattern 
from  the  slow  evolving  of  its  past.  We  see  a  system  of 
systems,  for  the  broad  features  of  clusters  and  streams 
and  spiral  windings  which  mark  the  general  design  are 
reproduced  in  every  part.  The  whole  is  in  motion,  each 
point  shifting  its  position  by  miles  every  second,  though 
from  the  august  magnitude  of  their  distances  from  us  and 
from  each  other,  it  is  only  by  the  accumulated  movements 
of  years  or  of  generations  that  some  small  changes  of 
relative  position  reveal  themselves." 

A  "system  of  systems,"  then,  with  the  "broad  fea- 
tures" "  reproduced  in  every  part,"  is  before  us.  Its  very 
outlines  suggest  a  general  process  of  physical  evolution. 
This  impression  is  after  a  fashion  confirmed  by  two  well- 
known  considerations,  one  of  which  is  relatively  older  in 
science,  while  the  other  is  at  the  moment  in  process  of 
highly  novel  development  through  spectroscopic  research. 
The  first  consideration  relates  to  the  fact  that  the  energy 
of  this  vast  material  system  is  now  distributed  in  a  man- 
ner that,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  is,  so  to  speak,  pecu- 
liarly unstable,  and  that  appears  to  involve  enormous 
future  changes  of  distribution  ;  while  if  we  look  back- 
wards we  see  that  there  must  have  been  involved  in  the 
past  a  long  and  continuous  process  of  a  particular  type 
leading  towards  the  present  state.  The  hot  stars,  in  cold 
space  far  from  one  another,  are  just  now  continually  dissi- 
pating their  heat  by  radiation.  If  one  inquires  into  the 


NATURE  AND   EVOLUTION.  315 

most  probable  source  of  all  this  heat-energy,  now  so  waste- 
fully  poured  out,  one  finds  but  one  highly  plausible  hypo- 
thesis, which  has  been  suggested  after  a  very  considerable 
study  of  the  phenomena  of  our  own  sun.  Contraction, 
under  the  influence  of  gravity,  most  probably  furnishes 
the  source  of  this  heat  in  case  of  each  of  the  great  stellar 
masses.  Contraction,  read  backwards,  and  interpreted  in 
the  light  of  the  well-known  and  now  pretty  widely  con- 
firmed nebular  hypothesis,  indicates  that  each  star  must 
once  have  been  far  larger  than  it  now  is,  and  that  the 
energy  now  radiated  as  heat  must  once  have  been  stored 
up  as  the  energy  of  position  of  widely  diffused  matter, 
whose  particles  gravitated  towards  one  another,  and  whoso 
state  is  probably  indicated  to  us  by  such  vast  masses  as 
certain  of  the  nebulae  show  us.  Condensation,  the  con- 
version of  the  energy  of  position  into  heat,  radiation  of 
heat,  the  continued  contraction  of  stellar  masses  :  such  is 
the  process  that  we  now  probably  see  indicated  before  us. 

The  recent  spectroscopic  study  of  the  stars  furnishes  a 
second  and  subordinate  sort  of  evidence,  which  adds  still 
further  plausibility  to  the  idea  of  this  unity  of  process 
throughout  the  heavens.  The  stars  seem,  we  are  told,  to 
fall  into  classes,  whose  physical  condition  strongly  sug- 
gests, although  it  cannot  yet  prove,  just  such  varieties  of 
age,  just  such  different  stages  in  the  process  of  condensa- 
tion and  of  cooling,  as  we  might  expect  to  discover  in  a 
universe  of  a  stellar  evolution  of  the  sort  that  the  nebular 
hypothesis  demands.  The  confirmation  from  this  source, 
incomplete  though  it  is,  is  highly  significant. 

Granting  these  hypotheses  about  the  world-system  around 
us,  —  hypotheses  rendered  daily  more  probable  in  the  light 
of  that  general  unity  of  material  structure  and  of  physical 
law  which  the  spectroscope  so  wonderfully  reveals,  —  then 
the  process  that  is  going  on  has  a  character  that  renders 
it  very  highly  problematic.  The  energy  of  this  system  is 
being  transformed,  as  we  have  seen ;  but  the  average 


316  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

transformations  appear  to  conform  to  a  type  which  sug. 
gests  that  the  bright  world  of  the  hot  stars,  as  it  now  is, 
must  be  destined  to  only  a  finite  period  of  existence. 
These  transformations,  namely,  are  taking  place  in  one 
direction.  The  energy  of  the  stellar  world  seems  to  be 
"  running  down,"  that  is,  to  be  passing  from  "  available  " 
to  "  unavailable  "  forms.  The  total  quantity  of  energy 
in  the  world  remains  constant ;  but  its  serviceableness  for 
continuing  the  world -process  that  we  now  observe  and 
admire  must  be  growing  momentarily  less.  We  cannot 
with  serious  probability  discover  any  compensating  pro- 
cess of  sufficient  magnitude  and  universality  to  enable  us 
to  see  how  the  stellar  evolution  could  go  on  forever,  in 
any  one  part  of  space,  however  large,  without  an  entire 
change  in  the  character  of  the  events  involved.  A  rhythm 
of  growth  and  decay,  a  passing  of  energy  from  "  higher  " 
to  "  lower  "  forms,  and  then  back  again  from  "  lower  "  to 
"  higher  "  forms,  in  case  that  were  the  law  of  the  process 
before  us,  would  suggest  an  ultimately  stable  "  moving 
equilibrium "  in  the  universe,  whose  "  broad  features," 
"  reproduced  in  every  part,"  would  be  those  of  an  endless 
life  of  ripening  and  decaying  solar  and  stellar  systems. 
But  unfortunately,  the  greater  part  of  the  energy  involved 
in  this  world  of  the  hot  stars  and  the  cold  space  no  sooner 
reaches  the  form  of  heat  energy,  shown  in  the  glowing 
stellar  surfaces  themselves,  than  it  is  radiated  off  into 
space ;  and  there  is  nothing  rhythmical,  so  far  as  we  can 
see,  about  the  results  of  the  process  of  radiation.  The 
fashion  of  this  world  changes ;  and  no  restoring  process 
adequately  compensates  for  the  change.  The  stellar  uni- 
verse continually  casts  this  bread  of  its  energy  on  to  the 
waters  of  infinite  space.  When  shall  it  be  found  again  ? 
To  speak  of  the  facts  more  particularly,  each  star  tends 
to  cool  off,  since  it  is  radiating  enormous  quantities  ef 
heat.  What  can  supply  the  loss,  and  keep  the  star  hot  ? 
The  answer  is,  that  the  contraction  of  each  stellar  mass, 


NATURE   AND   EVOLUTION.  317 

by  reason  of  gravitation,  continually  converts  energy  of 
position  into  heat-energy.  But  in  no  single  case  could  this 
contraction  go  on  indefinitely.  The  stars  that  we  know 
must  one  and  all  grow  old  and  die.  What  could  restore 
life  to  the  cooling  universe  ?  Collisions  of  stellar  masses  ? 
These  in  any  one  case  would  bring  to  pass  enormous  dif- 
fusions of  matter,  would  form  fresh  nebulae,  would  begin 
the  vast  processes  of  single  systems  once  more ;  but  would 
do  so  only  by  drawing  afresh  on  the  store  of  the  higher 
forms  of  energy  (that  is,  upon  the  energy  of  position  and 
the  energy  of  relative  stellar  motions).  The  energy  thus 
won,  and  made  available,  would  be  radiated  off  in  the 
end ;  would  be  lost  in  the  depths  of  space ;  and  the  pro- 
cess would  continue  only  at  a  loss. 

This  law  of  the  "degradation"  of  energy,  of  the  ten- 
dency everywhere  for  higher  forms  of  energy,  such  as 
those  of  the  energy  of  position  and  the  energy  of  the  mo- 
tion of  masses  of  matter,  to  pass,  when  transformed,  into 
the  lower  form  of  energy,  namely,  heat,  and  then  to  be 
radiated  off  into  space,  is  a  well-known  tendency,  present 
in  all  sorts  of  physical  processes.  Only  at  a  certain  loss 
can  heat-energy  be  transformed  back  into  higher  forms 
of  energy,  even  by  the  best  of  known  devices.  Heat  wa- 
ter, here  at  the  earth's  surface,  and  you  can  make  steam, 
and  get  the  steam  to  raise  bodies  to  higher  levels,  and  so 
get  some  of  your  heat-energy  stored  up  once  more  in  forms 
that  will  be  later  "  available  "  for  useful  service.  But  you 
can  do  so  only  at  a  loss.  In  order  to  transform  some  of 
the  heat-energy  at  your  disposal  into  a  higher  and  more 
useful  form,  you  have  to  waste  a  good  deal  of  heat,  by  let- 
ting it  heat  up  the  bodies  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
water  that  you  use,  and  by  so  letting  it  ultimately  diffuse 
itself  through  space  by  radiation.  Lost  heat  you  can't 
restore.  Energy  you  employ,  then,  only  by  giving  part  of 
it  away  as  waste  heat,  and  using  the  remainder  to  do  your 
work.  That  seems  to  be  the  way  of  our  universe.  Its 


818  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

energies  continually  diffuse  themselves  through  infinite 
space  in  "  degraded  "  form  as  ether  vibrations.  The  stars 
waste  vastly  more  than  they  can  give  to  their  planets. 
And  even  what  they  give  to  their  planets  is  continually 
being  lost,  as  our  own  earth  shows  us,  through  radiation, 

If,  then,  this  stellar  universe  possesses  at  present  any 
finite  quantity  of  "  kinetic  "  or  of  "  potential "  energy  in 
available  undiffused  forms,  that  is,  if  the  process  before 
us  is  confined  to  any  finite  portion  of  space,  then  the 
energy  seems  to  be  so  tending  to  lose  itself  in  diffused 
form,  that  in  some  finite  time  the  whole  process  must 
"  run  down."  The  evolution  must  cease. 

So,  at  least,  it  would  seem.  The  problem  as  suggested 
to  us  in  the  other  direction  is  obvious.  If  this  evolution 
must  sometime  cease,  how,  carrying  it  backwards,  can  we 
conceive  it  as  having  been  without  a  beginning?  A 
rhythmical  process,  in  which  there  is  a  regular  alterna- 
tion of  certain  conditions,  can  easily  be  conceived  as  hav- 
ing always  existed.  Look  back,  namely,  as  far  as  you 
will,  and  you  will  find  this  process  present  at  any  moment 
of  time,  in  some  stage  of  its  endlessly  repeated  rhythm. 
But  a  physical  process  that  shall  have  gone  on  through 
endless  time,  and  yet  always  in  the  same  direction,  an 
endless  wasting  of  energy  by  the  continual  conversion  of 
higher  into  lower  forms,  —  how  hard  to  conceive  of  such 
a  process  as  having  already  gone  on  forever !  The  only 
plausible  hypothesis  that  makes  such  a  conception  possible 
seems  at  first  sight  to  be  the  one  discussed  by  Professor 
W.  K.  Clifford,  in  his  brilliant  lecture  on  "  The  First  and 
Last  Catastrophe." l  In  order  to  follow  Clifford's  thought, 
let  us  fix  our  attention  for  a  moment  on  the  case  of  the 
earth.  If,  says  Clifford,  we  follow  back  the  probable  con- 
dition of  the  earth  itself,  we  find  that,  according  to  cer- 
tain computations,  this  planet  must  have  solidified  a  lim- 

1  See  his  Lectures  and  Essays,  vol.  i.  pp.  191-227  ;  in  particular, 
the  passages,  pp.  220,  221. 


NATURE   AND   EVOLUTION.  319 

ited  number  of  millions  of  years  since.  "  Before  that,  it 
was  cooling  as  a  liquid."  And  before  this  again,  further 
computations  would  show  that,  at  a  certain  time,  the  earth 
had  passed  from  the  gaseous  to  the  liquid  state.  And 
then,  continues  Clifford  :  — 

"  If  we  went  further  back  still  we  should  probably  find 
the  earth  falling  together  out  of  a  great  ring  of  matter 
surrounding  the  sun,  and  distributed  over  its  orbit.  The 
same  thing  is  true  of  every  body  of  matter ;  if  we  trace 
its  history  back,  we  come  to  a  certain  time  at  which  a  ca- 
tastrophe took  place ;  and  if  we  were  to  trace  back  the 
history  of  all  the  bodies  in  the  universe  in  that  way,  we 
should  continually  see  them  separating  up  into  smaller 
parts.  What  they  have  actually  done  is  to  fall  together 
and  get  solid.  If  we  could  reverse  the  process  we  should 
see  them  separating  and  getting  fluid ;  and,  as  a  limit  to 
that,  at  an  indefinite  distance  in  past  time,  we  should  find 
that  all  these  bodies  would  be  resolved  into  molecules, 
and  all  these  would  be  flying  away  from  each  other. 
There  would  be  no  limit  to  that  process,  and  we  could 
trace  it  as  far  back  as  ever  we  liked  to  trace  it.  So  that 
on  the  assumption  —  a  very  large  assumption  —  that  the 
present  constitution  of  the  laws  of  geometry  and  mechanics 
has  held  good  during  the  whole  of  past  time,  we  should  be 
led  to  the  conclusion  that,  at  an  inconceivably  long  time 
ago,  the  universe  did  consist  of  ultimate  molecules,  all 
separate  from  one  another  and  approaching  one  another. 
Then  they  would  meet  together  and  form  a  great  number 
of  small,  hot  bodies.  Then  you  would  have  the  process 
of  cooling  going  on  in  these  bodies,  exactly  as  we  find  it 
going  on  now.  But  you  will  observe  that  we  have  no  evi- 
dence of  such  a  catastrophe  as  implies  a  beginning  of  the 
laws  of  nature." 

Clifford,  as  you  will  see  from  his  words,  does  not  regard 
this  hypothesis  as  more  than  a  very  provisional  one.  All 
that  we  are  seeking  for  the  moment,  however,  is  a  plausi- 


320  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

ble  way  of  regarding  the  world  that  now  is  as  continuously 
linked  with  what  was,  and  with  what  will  be,  by  a  world 
process  that  extends  indefinitely  both  towards  the  past 
and  towards  the  future.  Towards  the  future,  as  we  have 
seen,  it  is  very  hard  to  conceive  the  present  process  as 
indefinitely  extended  without  coming  to  what  Clifford 
himself  (page  224  of  the  same  lecture)  describes  thus :  — 

"  If  we  were  to  travel  forward,  .  .  .  and  consider 
things  as  falling  together,  we  should  come  finally  to  a 
great  central  mass,  all  in  one  piece,  which  would  send  out 
waves  of  heat  through  a  perfectly  empty  ether,  and  grad- 
ually cool  itself  down.  As  this  mass  got  cool  it  would  be 
deprived  of  all  life  and  motion  ;  it  would  be  just  an 
enormous  frozen  block  in  the  middle  of  the  ether." 

In  the  past,  again,  extending  the  present  process  back- 
wards, we  come,  as  Clifford  has  shown  us,  to  a  condition 
of  greater  and  greater  diffusion  of  matter,  to  a  state  where 
more  and  more  energy  took  the  form  of  energy  of  position, 
and  where  there  was  less  and  less  of  the  present  condi- 
tion of  stellar  systems  with  highly  heated  solar  surfaces. 
In  both  cases  our  effort  to  conceive  the  world-process  as 
one  process  is  founded,  as  Clifford  points  out,  on  the 
"  large  assumption  "  that  the  "  present  constitution  of  the 
laws  of  geometry  and  mechanics  has  held  good  during  the 
whole  of  past  time,"  or  in  other  words  that  the  world  is 
what  it  now  seems  to  be  to  our  more  exact  scientific  con- 
sciousness. The  question  now  is  whether  the  conception 
that  we  thus  get  is  an  essentially  coherent  one. 

At  the  present  stage  of  our  inquiry  it  would  be  mere 
Philistinism  to  dwell,  as  many  are  disposed  to  do,  upon 
the  disheartening  notion  of  the  past  and  future  state  of 
our  universe  which  these  considerations  and  hypotheses  so 
far  suggest.  Our  criticism  of  the  presuppositions  of  mod- 
ern inquiry  will  have,  in  due  time  and  place,  to  study  the 
moral  and  religious  aspect  of  the  real  world.  But  just 
now  we  dare  not  call  in  question  hypotheses  as  to  nature, 


NATURE   AND   EVOLUTION.  321 

merely  because  they  do  not  meet  the  longings  of  our 
hearts.  Our  criticism  must  go  deeper. 

Turning  back  at  once,  however,  to  the  theoretical  as- 
pect of  the  matter,  we  find  that  this  conception  of  the 
real  world  is,  as  we  have  already  observed,  at  all  events 
a  very  highly  problematic  one.  We  may  well  doubt  the 
ultimate  coherence  of  these  our  empirical  notions  of  the 
physical  world  when  thus  driven,  as  it  were,  to  their  limits, 
when  pressed  into  service  to  define  a  possible  world-pro- 
cess that  shall  include  the  known  phenomena,  and  that 
shall  still  be  continuous  and  boundless  in  time.  Yet  not 
in  vain  will  have  been  our  efforts  so  far  if  we  take  into 
account  a  consideration  that  just  now  becomes  highly  im- 
portant for  us. 

There  is,  namely,  no  more  useful  experiment  in  philo- 
sophy than  just  such  an  effort  as  the  one  now  before  us, 
to  universalize  our  conceptions  of  things,  to  try  what  be- 
comes of  them  when  we  do  pass  to  the  limit,  and  suppose 
them  true  for  all  the  world  and  for  all  time.  Such  an 
experiment  often  is  for  philosophy  what  a  crucial  test  in 
a  laboratory  is  for  physics.  It  decides  for  us,  namely, 
what  sort  of  conception  we  are  dealing  with ;  and  that  is 
why  these  speculations  are  worth  our  while.  A  concep- 
tion that  could  consistently  be  thus  universalized,  that 
could  be  used  to  define  an  absolute  or  a  self-completed 
world-process,  that  thus  could  have  an  essentially  bound- 
less application,  might  be  a  conception  of  an  objective 
and  well-founded  type,  true  of  the  real  world  apart  from 
our  merely  human  point  of  view.  But  a  conception  that 
you  can't  universalize,  that  seems  to  contradict  itself,  or 
that  gives  rise  to  highly  suspicious  incongruities,  so  soon 
as  you  press  it  to  the  limit,  so  soon  as  you  suppose  it  to 
apply  semper  et  ubique,  is  thereby  shown  to  be  in  all  prob- 
ability a  conception  of  an  essentially  human  character  or 
else  of  no  world-wide  objectivity.  It  may  have  truth 
about  it,  but  this  truth  will  in  part  be  due  to  our  own 


322  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

limited  point  of  view,  to  our  particular  station  in  the  uni- 
verse. This  notion  will  be,  so  to  speak,  a  mortal  concep- 
tion of  things,  not  a  conception  of  a  really  eternal  truth. 
For  example :  the  notion  of  the  earth  as  supported  by 
an  elephant  that  stood  on  a  tortoise  was  such  an  essen- 
tially transient  and  merely  human  conception,  just  because 
it  was  derived  from  the  analogy  of  a  very  special  and 
limited  experience  of  ours,  and  was  obviously  incapable  of 
true  universalization.  Seeking  to  pass  to  the  limit,  you 
found  yourself  in  a  world  whose  law  was  that  all  things 
needed  support  from  beneath,  while  you  could  never  find 
a  real  supporter  in  the  world,  whether  for  the  earth  or 
for  anything  else.  For  any  supporter  in  your  world-series 
would  be  such  only  in  so  far  as  he  was  first  conceived 
to  be  supported.  And  so  as  no  unsupported  supporter 
could  be  found  in  a  series  thus  defined,  while  an  unsup- 
ported supporter  would  be  essentially  needed  somewhere 
to  give  all  above  him  a  real  foundation,  the  defined  series 
would  be  worthless  for  the  purpose  of  explaining  the 
earth's  apparent  stability.  Very  different,  however,  is 
the  conception  (a  purely  ideal  one,  to  be  sure)  of  the 
stability  of  a  gravitative  system  in  otherwise  absolutely 
empty  space,  —  a  system  that  should  consist,  say,  of  a  sun 
and  a  planet,  both  moving  with  perfect  freedom  about 
their  common  centre  of  gravity,  both  uninfluenced  by 
disturbances  from  without,  and  both  rigid  and  homogene- 
ous spherical  bodies.  Such  a  system,  although  it  does  not 
exist  in  our  physical  world,  can  be  conceived  as  existing. 
Such  a  system,  moreover,  under  the  law  of  gravity,  would 
give  us  an  endless  rhythmic  change  of  position  on  the 
part  of  its  members,  the  small  planet  revolving  in  an 
established  orbit  about  its  large  sun,  or  rather  both  mov- 
ing about  their  common  centre.  The  motion  in  question 
would  be  a  stable  one.  There  would  be  no  difficulty  in 
predicting  the  position,  velocity,  and  acceleration  of  the 
planet  at  any  time,  from  its  position  and  motion  at  any 


NATURE   AND   EVOLUTION.  323 

other.  The  possible  positions  of  the  planet  in  its  orbit 
would  form  a  closed  curve.  One  complete  cycle  of  the 
system  would  exhaustively  exemplify  all,  and  would  not 
be  iii  need  of  a  support  or  explanation  from  any  source 
outside  the  system.  The  motion  in  an  universe  so  consti- 
tuted would  be,  as  defined,  essentially  endless.  In  this 
empty  space  no  physical  condition  could  have  produced  or 
begun  it ;  and  nothing  could  end  it.  The  conception  of 
such  an  universe  is  essentially  self-completed,  and  so  as 
an  universe  possible.  Such  an  universe,  then,  although  it 
is  not  real,  might  be  real.  The  universe  where  the  stabil- 
ity of  things  was  only  to  be  explained  by  such  a  notion 
as  that  of  the  earth  supported  by  elephant  and  tortoise, 
can!t  be  real;  for  either  elephant  and  tortoise,  as  con- 
ceived, would  not  be  real  supporters  at  all,  or  else  if  they 
were,  then,  like  the  conceived  earth  itself,  they  would  need 
support  ere  they  could  become  supporters,  whilst  in  the 
world  as  so  conceived  they  could  find  no  ultimate  support 
whatever. 

I  exemplify  this  rather  abstruse-seeming  distinction 
between  essentially  coherent  and  essentially  incoherent 
notions  of  the  universe  in  its  wholeness,  not  for  the  sake 
of  involving  my  argument  in  unnecessary  subtlety,  but 
for  the  sake  of  preparing  the  way  for  what  seems  to  me  a 
not  unimportant  step  forwards  in  our  discussion. 

II. 

No  one  doubts  the  validity  of  the  foregoing  inductions 
of  physical  science  when  judged  by  their  own  presupposi- 
tions, and  taken  within  their  chosen  limits.  But  they  are 
confessedly  inductions  about  the  world  as  it  seems.  As 
they  are  originally  made,  they  therefore  do  not  profess  to 
give  us  a  theory  about  the  ultimately  real  world.  It  is  our 
own  reflective  interest  that  has  now  suggested  to  us  the 
mere  experiment  of  seeing  whether  the  conceptions  that 
these  inductions  involve  are  capable  of  being  universalized, 


824  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

of  being  pressed  to  the  limit,  and  whether  they  remain 
coherent  when  this  is  hypothetically  done.  The  purpose 
of  the  experiment  is  to  see  whether  the  world  as  it  seems 
to  outer  experience  can  really  be  viewed  as  a  fair  speci- 
men of  the  world  as  it  really  is. 

Supposing  this  process  of  the  aggregation  of  matter 
and  the  radiation  of  energy  into  space  to  be  a  specimen 
of  the  ultimately  real  process  of  nature,  can  we,  with  Clif- 
ford, regard  this  as  a  process  that,  uncertainties  apart, 
can  without  incoherence  be  conceived  as  boundless  in 
time  ?  As  an  example  of  a  hypothetical  process  that 
can  be  so  conceived,  we  have  just  had  the  case  of  the 
ideal  system  of  rigid  sun  and  planet,  alone  in  space  and 
changeless  in  inner  physical  structure.  Their  rhythm, 
would  be  a  perfect  one.  Their  motion  would  occur  in 
closed  cycles.  Beginning  or  end  of  their  process  would 
be  physically  unintelligible.  An  universe  that  contained 
them  and  them  only  would  be  logically  as  well  as  physi- 
cally complete.  No  evolution  would  occur  there ;  and 
none  would  be  needed  or  conceivable.  Is  our  seeming 
world  that  is  now  one  of  a  "  running-down  "  energy,  con- 
stant in  quantity,  but  such  that  it  is  tending  to  "  degrada- 
tion "  in  form,  a  world  that  we  can  coherently  conceive  as 
eternal  ? 

Difficulties  at  once  occur  to  us.  Let  us  put  them  as 
simply  as  possible.  A  process  called  aggregation  shall 
have  been  endlessly  going  on.  What  stage  has  it  novf 
reached?  The  answer  is,  one  of  very  imperfect  aggre 
gation.  The  masses  of  matter  now  coherent  in  the  world 
before  us  are,  despite  their  imposing  size,  after  all  com- 
paratively small.  Their  number  is,  meanwhile,  compara- 
tively speaking,  very  great.  Many  millions  of  suns,  —  no 
sun  in  sight  that  we  are  forced  to  regard  as  after  all  so 
very  much  larger  than  our  own  sun.  Some  stars  may  be 
several  hundreds  or  thousands  of  times  the  mass  of  our 
own  sun.  None,  however,  are  big  enough  to  show  us 


NATURE   AND   EVOLUTION.  325 

across  the  interstellar  spaces  any  disk.  What  we  see 
are  mere  points  of  light.  Where  instead  of  points  we  see 
large  nebulae,  of  considerable  apparent  area,  we  get  evi- 
dence of  the  presence  of  diffused  gas  and  perhaps,  also,  of 
meteor  -  swarms,  not  of  highly  aggregated  and  still  ex- 
tremely vast  masses  of  matter.  As  to  the  significance  of 
this  fact,  there  is  indeed  nothing  exact,  as  yet,  about  our 
present  consideration.  So  far  it  merely  arouses  our  sus- 
picion. If  aggregation  has  been  going  on  endlessly,  there 
ought  to  be,  one  would  think,  at  least  a  few  prodigious 
centres  of  aggregation,  as  big,  say,  in  angular  size,  when 
seen  even  across  these  prodigious  spaces,  as  the  larger 
nebulae  appear  to  us,  and  still  as  coherent  at  least  as  is 
the  mass  of  Sirius.  The  small  average  size  of  the  suns  is 
precisely  what  one  might  expect  to  see  if  at  some  finite 
time  in  the  past  aggregation  had  begun  hereabouts  in 
space,  the  nebular  gaseous  matter,  or  the  meteoric  swarms, 
having  at  the  beginning  of  that  time  filled  pretty  evenly 
our  part  of  space.  But  this  is  not  what  our  hypothesis, 
carried  to  the  limit,  pretends  to  suggest.  Universal 
aggregation,  going  on  wherever  there  was  matter,  —  this 
is  what  shall  have  filled  the  endless  past.  And  still,  — 
this  incomplete  result ! 

I  repeat,  I  do  not  at  all  exaggerate  the  force  of  so  inex- 
actly formulated  a  consideration.  Clifford's  way  of  stat- 
ing his  hypothetical  case  of  a  look  into  the  past  might  al- 
ready seem  to  have  forestalled  our  objection.  But  I  give 
it  this  form  by  way  of  introducing  later  a  more  serious 
reflection. 

Meanwhile,  a  second  doubt  comes  to  mind,  and  this 
time  with  regard  to  the  energy  of  our  world.  It  shall 
have  tended  always  towards  the  final  state  of  indefinite 
degradation  and  dispersion.  And  yet  there  is  so  much  of 
it  still  "  available ! "  These  stars  are  so  hot,  this  store 
of  energy,  wasted  for  an  infinite  time,  shall  have  left  us 
after  all  still  so  far  from  the  frozen  termination  of  all 


826  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

evolution!  Is  not  this  incompleteness  another  cause  of 
suspicion  ?  Can  our  conceptions  thus  be  fully  universal- 
ized without  a  curious  inconsistency?  Ought  not  a  pro- 
cess that  from  all  eternity  has  taken  but  one  direction  to 
have  been  completed  long  ago  ? 

But  I  hasten  to  correct  these  inexact  considerations  by 
opposing  to  them  Clifford's  very  simple  way  of  stating 
the  case  for  the  inner  coherence  of  our  present  concep- 
tions of  natural  law.  What  "  the  bodies  of  the  universe  " 
"  have  actually  done,"  he  says,  "  is  to  fall  together  and 
get  solid.  If  we  could  reverse  the  process  we  should  see 
them  separating,  .  .  .  and  as  a  limit  ...  at  an  indefinite 
distance  in  past  time  we  should  find  that  all  these  bodies 
would  be  resolved  into  molecules,  and  "  [if  we  read  the 
process  backwards]  "  all  these  would  be  flying  away  from 
each  other.  There  would  be  no  limit  to  that  process,  and 
we  could  trace  it  as  far  back  as  ever  we  liked  to  trace  it." 
In  this  way,  thinks  Clifford,  we  should  get  a  definable 
endless  process  for  the  physical  universe.  That  we  our- 
selves happen  to  live  and  to  be  sentient  just  at  the  mo- 
ment when  the  infinite  process  has  reached  this  stage,  is, 
after  all,  not  more  marvelous  than  that  we  live  at  all. 
Infinite  past  and  future  time  being  once  assumed,  we  our- 
selves must  of  course  come  somewhere  in  the  process,  and 
we  come  just  where  we  actually  find  ourselves,  the  pro- 
cess being  in  a  peculiarly  critical  and  transitional  stage. 

But  it  is  not  our  own  existence  that  is  just  here  the 
problem.  It  is  the  real  world  which  thus  conceived  has, 
when  viewed  in  time,  a  very  singular  character.  There  is 
a  stage  in  its  endless  life,  when,  for  a  finite  period,  which 
we  may  call  E  (meaning  thereby  the  portion  of  time  during 
which  what  we  call  processes  of  evolution  are  possible), 
there  is  a  considerable,  but  still  not  an  extreme  aggrega- 
tion of  its  matter,  and  yet  a  considerable,  though  not  an 
extreme  retention  of  energy  of  position  on  the  part  of  its 
constituent  masses.  During  this  time  suns  and  systems 


NATURE  AND   EVOLUTION.  327 

form,  stars  are  hot,  and  planetary  life  may,  as  on  our  earth, 
be  possible.  Before  this  period  lies  an  endless  time  P,  a 
past  when  aggregation  was  small,  but  when  there  were 
nebulae,  meteor  swarms,  yes,  if  you  go  far  enough  back, 
separated  molecules.  These  had  much  energy  of  position, 
or  of  motion,  or  of  both.  They  had  not  yet,  on  the  aver- 
age, converted  much  of  it  into  heat.  There  were  in  those 
times  no  processes  of  evolution  possible.  Then  beyond 
and  after  the  time  E  there  is  to  lie  an  endless  future  F, 
wherein  once  more  the  matter  is  aggregated  but  cold,  the 
energy  is  dispersed  through  space  in  the  ether,  and  what 
we  call  evolution  is  over.  The  result  is  an  absolute  divi- 
sion of  infinite  time  into  the  three  parts :  — 

< P    |   E    |   F > 

and  this  division  shall  be  not  merely  our  private  and  finite 
interpretation  of  the  thing,  but  the  truth  of  nature.  The 
world  of  high  temperatures,  of  large  and  rapidly  condens- 
ing masses,  of  planets  and  suns,  of  all  the  complex  nat- 
ural processes,  electrical,  magnetic,  chemical,  connected 
with  the  life  of  solar  systems,  —  this  world  is  an  excep- 
tion in  the  wastes  of  infinite  time.  P  contains  nothing 
of  the  sort.  F  contains  nothing  of  the  sort.  Only  the 
select  region  E,  of  the  temporal  process,  gives  birth  to 
such  things. 

Now  a  natural  process  that  is  essentially  confined  to  one 
part  of  infinite  time,  and  that  finds  no  place  elsewhere, 
is  the  real  anomaly  with  which  we  have  so  far  to  deal. 
We  wanted  to  conceive  nature  as  one  process.  We  have 
really  conceived  it  as  a  drama  in  three  acts,  essentially 
separate  in  physical  character  from  one  another,  despite 
the  continuity  of  motions  that  joins  them.  This  anomaly 
needs,  at  all  events,  further  scrutiny.  This  is  an  odd 
world  that  we  have  got  ourselves  into.  How  odd,  we  shall 
in  some  measure  comprehend  only  after  I  have  taxed  your 
patience  with  yet  one  more  subtlety,  to  which  I  now  invite 
your  brief,  but  very  careful  attention. 


828  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

III. 

Whatever  other  difficulties  this  conceived  world  may  01 
may  not  contain,  it  is  sure  that  its  boundlessness  in  time, 
and  the  fashion  of  its  presence  in  boundless  space,  are 
of  a  sort  very  different  from  those  which  we  before  as- 
cribed to  the  conceived  simple  gravitative  system  consist- 
ing of  two  bodies.  In  the  latter  world,  namely,  there  was 
always  going  on  a  certain  cyclical  process  of  one  fixed 
type.  The  sun  and  its  conceived  planet  were  somehow 
there  in  space.  Looking  back  as  far  as  we  liked,  we 
should  always  find  the  pair  occupying  some  one  of  the 
determinate  relative  positions  that  they  pass  through 
during  their  endlessly  repeated  cycles.  Looking  back- 
wards or  forwards,  therefore,  we  should  not  be  driven  by 
any  special  physical  problems  of  this  conceived  world 
to  puzzle  ourselves  about  the  sense  in  which  there  is  any 
real  infinity  of  space  and  time  at  all.  It  is  true,  as  every- 
body has  heard,  that  there  are  obvious  and  serious  difficul- 
ties in  the  way  of  conceiving  how  space  and  time  are  to 
be  really  infinite  actualities,  —  how,  off  yonder,  there  can 
actually  exist  parts  of  space  infinitely  remote  from  us,  or 
how,  looking  backwards,  we  can  say  that  there  ever  did 
occur  events  an  infinitely  long  time  ago.  But  now,  as  we 
see,  the  world  of  our  closed  cycle  of  planet  revolving 
about  sun  suggests  by  no  marked  physical  peculiarity  of 
its  processes  any  question  about  this  reality  of  infinite 
space  and  infinite  time  as  such.  We  have  called  its  exis- 
tence boundless  in  time.  We  mean  by  that  only  that  its 
supposed  existence  would  seem  to  be  as  endless  as  is 
time,  —  not  less  so,  not  more  so.  If  there  is  any  trouble 
about  conceiving  of  infinite  time,  that  is  the  fault  of 
time,  not  of  this  simple  mechanical  rhythm  of  planet 
swinging  about  sun.  Whatever  endless  time  means,  that 
the  rhythm  of  this  conceived  simple  system  is  adequate 
to  fill.  Even  so,  too,  in  case  of  space.  We  have  supposed 


NATURE  AND   EVOLUTION.  329 

our  sun  and  planet  to  be  alone  in  boundless  space.  Just 
what  an  actually  boundless  space  is,  it  is  hard  to  define. 
One  soon  comes  to  suspect,  when  one  tries  a  definition, 
that  one  is  dealing  with  a  self-contradictory  notion.  But 
be  that  as  it  may,  the  conceived  sun  and  planet,  there  to- 
gether in  space,  require  space  to  exist  in,  but  have  by 
hypothesis  no  physical  relations  to  infinite  space,  do  not 
trouble  themselves,  as  it  were,  about  whether  space  is  in- 
finite or  no.  If  a  really  infinite  space  can  exist,  then  the 
sun  and  planet  can  be  in  it ;  but  for  their  physical  rela- 
tions they  require  only  the  finite  bit  of  space  within  their 
own  masses  and  within  the  planet's  orbit.  The  existence 
of  such  a  system,  then,  is  to  be  called  essentially  bound- 
less in  time  just  because  its  physical  properties  drive  us  to 
no  assumptions  about  what  boundless  time  is  and  means, 
but  are  processes  that,  as  being  rhythmical  and  self-com- 
pleted, arouse  no  question  as  to  how  or  when  they  could 
have  begun,  and  are  therefore  boundless  in  whatever  sense 
time  itself  proves  to  be  boundless.  This  same  existence 
is  again  intelligible  as  a  conceived  fact  in  boundless  space, 
because,  whatever  boundless  space  means,  this  process,  as 
being  a  definite  and  limited  one,  could  find  its  place  in 
such  a  space. 

But  now  (and  here  is  the  important  point),  the  world  of 
the  "  running-down  "  energy,  and  of  the  endlessly  consoli- 
dating matter,  differs  from  this  simple  world  of  the  sun 
and  planet,  in  that  its  existence  has,  as  conceived,  an  essen- 
tially physical  relation  to  an  actually  infinite  space  and 
time,  so  that  its  processes  cannot  be  conceived  as  bound- 
less in  time,  merely  because  they  suggest  to  us,  like  the 
sun  and  planet,  no  possible  beginning ;  but  can  only  be 
conceived  as  boundless  by  first  meeting  and  overcoming 
all  the  difficulties  as  to  an  actually  infinite  space  and  time. 
Infinite  space  and  time  as  such  become,  in  such  a  theory, 
.  matters,  not  of  dim  possibility,  but  rather  parts  of  a  phys- 
ical hypothesis.  They  render  this  physical  hypothesis, 


830  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

therefore,  peculiarly  hard  to  conceive  with  congruity. 
This  is  no  place  for  dwelling  in  full  upon  what  these  diffi- 
culties about  infinite  space  and  time  really  are.  I  am  not 
here  setting  forth  at  length  a  philosophy,  but  only  sug- 
gesting one.  What  I  have  to  point  out,  however,  may  be 
indicated  by  returning  to  a  former  analogy.  I  have  said 
that  this  world,  where  all  the  processes  take  the  one  direc- 
tion towards  the  consolidation  of  matter,  is  very  unlike  the 
simple  and  rhythmical  world  of  the  conceived  sun  and 
planet.  What  I  now  have  to  point  out  is  that  this  our 
world  of  the  endlessly  consolidating  matter,  if  taken  as 
an  absolutely  real  world,  would  much  resemble  in  one 
feature  that  other  conceived  world  where  the  elephant 
rested  on  the  tortoise.  The  trouble  with  that  world  was 
that  support  was  assumed  to  be  needed,  and  yet  none  was 
ever  defined.  The  trouble  with  this  world  is  that  the 
store  of  available  energy  at  any  moment,  lacking  both 
permanency  in  itself  and  any  tendency  to  get,  through 
rhythmic  processes,  a  periodic  restoration  of  its  previous 
quantity,  sends  us  backwards  endlessly  in  time  for  a 
definition  of  the  very  physical  process  and  constitution 
to  which  its  present  quantity  shall  have  been  due.  Now 
some  sort  of  endless  regress  in  time  is  in  one  sense  forced 
upon  us  by  every  physical  process.  The  simple  rhythm 
of  the  sun  and  planet  also  sent  us  back  endlessly  into 
time ;  not  in  order  that  we  should  find  out  what  sort 
of  process  it  was  (for  that  we  learned  from  any  one  cy- 
cle), but  only  in  order  that  we  should  see  how  such  a 
process  as  that  could  not  be  conceived  to  have  a  physical 
beginning.  But  this  process  of  the  endlessly  consolidating 
world,  as  Clifford  defines  it,  sends  us  back  into  time  much 
as  the  earth,  elephant  and  tortoise  series  would  send  us  off 
into  space.  Would  it  be  any  answer  to  an  objector  to 
say,  in  case  of  the  elephant  and  tortoise  series :  —  Oh,  the 
tortoise,  too,  is  supported  by  another-  creature,  say  a  giant ; 
and  he  by  a  tree ;  that  by  something  else  ;  and  so  on  ad 


NATURE  AND   EVOLUTION.  331 

infimtum  ?  No,  for  thus  no  support  would  to  all  infinity 
ever  begin  to  be  explained.  Even  so,  although  a  perfectly 
rhythmical  and  complete  physical  process  can  easily,  with- 
out incongruity,  be  regarded  as  unbounded  when  we  look 
backwards,  —  a  boundless  regress  where,  on  the  other 
hand,  all  the  character  of  the  process  changes  as  we  go 
backwards,  and  changes,  wholly  without  rhythm  or  any 
sort  of  reversal  of  type,  in  one  general  direction,  does  and 
must  involve  incongruity. 

What  incongruity  may  now  be  finally  and  succinctly 
pointed  out.  Any  moment  of  time,  however  remote,  must 
actually  have  been  passed  through  in  order  that  our  con- 
solidating world  should  have  reached  its  present  state. 
To  any  such  past  moment,  would  correspond  some  actual 
physical  state  of  our  supposed  world.  Far  back  in  time 
its  state  would  have  been  one  of  greater  and  greater  dis- 
integration. Passing  to  the  limit  we  can  say  that  our 
hypothesis  would  suppose,  (1)  that  at  an  infinite  past 
time  the  particles  of  matter  now  together  in  the  stars 
must  have  been  infinitely  distant  from  one  another  ;  and 
(2)  that,  since  every  state,  even  the  present  one,  presup- 
poses and  demands  all  the  previous  states  of  this  un- 
rhythmical process  as  physically  necessary  antecedents, 
the  present  state  of  the  universe  could  not  be  unless  that 
antecedent  state  of  the  mutually  infinite  remoteness  of  its 
parts  actually  did  precede. 

The  idea  of  infinite  remoteness,  as  te;ng  an  actual 
physical  fact,  is,  however,  notoriously  hard  to  conceive. 
It  is  one  thing  to  say  that  our  space  is  such  that,  however 
far  you  go  out  into  its  depths,  you  could  always  go  further. 
To  mention  that  character  of  space  is  merely  to  state  a 
fact  of  our  space  conception,  —  a  fact  that  nobody  has 
any  trouble  to  conceive.  It  is  quite  another  thing  to  try 
to  conceive  a  state  of  the  world  in  which  there  are  actu- 
ally two  particles  of  matter  that  shall  be  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  leagues  apart.  The  conception  of  the  boundless- 


832  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

ness  of  space  is,  in  the  first  case,  a  mere  expression  of  oni 
actual  failure  to  conceive  of  a  boundary.  This  failure  is 
a  fact  of  immediate  observation  for  our  consciousness. 
But  if  I  say,  in  the  second  case :  There  are,  in  a  certain 
state  of  the  world,  two  particles  of  matter,  p  and  g-,  and 
the  distance  between  these  two  particles  is  an  infinite  dis 
tance,  I  contradict  myself.  For  the  line  pq  which  joins 
these  particles  must  by  hypothesis  end  in  one  direction  at 
p  and  in  the  other  direction  at  y,  —  in  other  words  must 
be  finite. 

And  yet  our  present  hypothesis  as  to  the  real  world 
demands  of  us  the  assertion  that  such  a  contradictory  state 
of  things  must  have  been  real  in  order  that  the  present 
state  of  the  world  should  have  come  to  pass. 

Clifford  himself,  in  stating  the  hypothesis,  avoids  our 
present  incongruity  by  saying  only  that,  in  case  of  the 
endlessly  consolidating  world,  the  behavior  of  things  is 
such  that  if  we  go  back  as  far  as  ever  we  like,  we  shall 
find  the  particles  of  matter  further  and  further  apart. 
But  unfortunately  such  a  statement  does  not  exhaust  the 
difficulty  in  case  this  seeming  process  has  always  been  an 
absolutely  real  one.  Fixing  our  attention  once  more  on 
two  particles,  p  and  q,  we  see  that,  by  the  hypothesis,  at  a 
time  (^)  they  were  a  certain  distance  apart  (e?i),  and  that 
an  earlier  time  (£2)  they  were  yet  further  apart  (say  a  dis- 
tance <?2),  and  so  on  indefinitely.  But  now  in  order  that 
they  should  reach  the  distance  apart  that  we  have  called  d^ 
they  must  before  have  been  actually  at  the  distance  from 
another  that  we  have  called  d2.  Passing  to  the  limit, 
then,  we  have  to  say  that  in  order  to  reach  the  less  dis- 
tances they  must  universally  have  been  first  at  the  greater 
distances,  so  that  unless  one  presupposes  the  greater  as 
real,  and  so  at  the  limit,  the  infinite  distance  as  actually 
precedent,  the  finite  distances  cannot  have  been  reached. 
It  is  n't  merely  the  case,  then,  that  we  are  dealing  with 
en  hypothesis  of  a  process  that,  however  far  we  choose  to 


NATURE  AND   EVOLUTION.  333 

follow  it,  proves  to  be  for  our  consciousness,  and  from  our 
point  of  view,  unlimited.  The  trouble  is  that  unless  we 
first  conceive  the  unlimited  distances  as  real,  the  limited 
distances  can  never  be  reached.  Therefore,  if  the  process 
is  what  it  seems  to  be,  namely,  an  absolutely  real  one,  the 
unlimited  distances  must  have  been  real.  Our  infinite  in 
this  case  is  n't  the  indefinite  beyond  that  we  do  not  attain, 
however  far  back  we  go.  It  is  the  impossible  that  yet 
must  have  been  actually  and  absolutely  attained  before 
any  of  the  states  of  the  world  that  we  experience  could 
have  been  reached.  Only  by  passing  through  this  im- 
possible infinite  distance  from  one  another,  can  the  parti- 
cles p  and  q  have  reached  the  conceivable  finite  distances 
from  one  another. 

The  parallel  between  this  supposed  real  world  and  that 
of  the  elephant  and  tortoise  is  now  fairly  plain.  The 
true  supporter  of  the  elephant-tortoise  earth  must,  i/*he 
exists  at  all,  be  infinitely  remote  and  yet  real.  Without 
him  elephant  and  tortoise,  by  hypothesis,  could  not  sup- 
port anything,  being  themselves  unsupported.  Even  so, 
the  true  antecedent  of  our  present  physical  world  must, 
on  Clifford's  hypothesis,  be  a  state  in  which  the  space 
relations  of  the  smallest  particles  of  matter  were  relations 
of  infinite  remoteness  from  one  another.  Dropping  out 
the  consideration  of  the  infinite  time,  we  can  then  say  in 
absolute  terms  that,  on  this  hypothesis,  there  was  for- 
merly a  real  state  of  the  world  in  which  its  ultimate  par- 
ticles were  at  infinite  distances  from-  one  another.  Is  this 
not  as  if  we  said  of  the  elephant  and  tortoise :  There  is, 
at  an  infinite  distance,  that  which  supports  the  whole 
series  and  them  ? 

I  repeat,  upon  the  more  technical  aspect  of  the  difficul- 
ties regarding  infinite  space  and  time,  I  have  not  here 
further  to  dwell.  What  we  have  found  is  simply  this :  — 

1.  There  are  possible  physical  processes  that  you  can 
conceive  as  universalized,  as  essentially  boundless  in  time, 


334  THE   SPIRIT  OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

as  existent  in  boundless  space,  without  any  effort  to  define 
what  the  positive  nature  of  a  really  infinite  time  and 
space  are.  Such  processes  are  the  ones  known  as  "  cycli- 
cal." In  case  of  these  processes,  the  definition  of  one 
cycle  involves  the  description  of  all.  A  "  cyclical  "  physi- 
cal process,  conceived  as  isolated  in  space,  could  not 
change  its  character  through  any  physical  cause.  How- 
ever long,  therefore,  you  followed  it  forwards  or  back- 
wards, you  would  find  only  the  same  thing  repeated.  In 
this  conception  there  is  nothing  difficult.  Such  a  process 
you  would  call  essentially  endless ;  meaning  thereby  that 
whatever  endless  time  really  means,  and  whatever  its  ulti- 
mate nature  turns  out  to  be,  the  processes  in  question 
would  be  adequate  to  that  endlessness.  Of  such  processes 
our  supposed  sun  and  planet  example  is  an  illustration. 
There  is  no  incongruity  involved  in  universalizing  such 
processes. 

2.  But  there  are,  on  the  other  hand,  possible  physical 
processes  that  you  cannot  thus  universalize,  without  pre- 
supposing infinite  space  and  time  as  being  themselves,  in 
all  their  infinity,  elements  in  the  definition  of  certain 
states  of  the  physical  process  in  question.  Of  such  phys- 
ical processes  the  world  of  the  elephant  and  tortoise 
series,  and  the  world  of  Clifford's  hypothesis,  are  possible 
examples,  so  soon  as  you  suppose  them  to  be  not  seeming 
but  genuinely  real  worlds.  Common  sense  will  at  once 
say  that  as  we  have  no  notion  of  infinite  space  and  time 
as  actual  physical  wholes,  we  can  have  no  right  thus  to 
universalize  such  processes,  in  case  we  meet  with  special 
examples  of  them  in  our  experience.  Philosophy  goes 
deeper,  and  declares  that  thus  to  universalize  such  physi- 
cal process  involves  us  in  incongruity,  involves  the  presup- 
position of  a  real  past  state  of  the  world  whose  very  defi- 
nition is  self-contradictory. 

The  result,  so  far,  is  that  the  world  of  the  endlessly  con- 
solidating matter  can't  be  the  ultimately  real  world,  but 


NATURE  AND   EVOLUTION.  335 

must  be  only  a  seeming  world  whose  anomalous  character 
is  due  to  our  private  and  human  point  of  view.  Seen  as 
we  see  it,  the  empirical  truth  about  matter  and  energy 
must  be  only  the  show  of  a  deeper  truth.  This  apparent 
law  of  the  endless  consolidation  of  the  universe  must  be 
only  a  fragmentary  aspect.  These  stars  and  "  intertwined 
spirals  "  and  "  convoluted  windings  "  of  stars,  these  hypo- 
thetical molecules  that  have  been  forever  falling  nearer 
and  nearer  together,  this  process  that  has  been  forever 
taking  one  direction  without  reaching  as  yet  its  goal,  — 
all  these  things  must  belong  to  the  show  of  reality.  The 
substance,  the  soul  of  it  all,  must  lie  behind.  The  real 
world  process  cannot  thus  be  essentially  a  paradox,  essen- 
tially incomplete,  fundamentally  absurd.  It  must  have  at 
least  as  much  unity  and  self-consistency  as  a  "  cyclical  " 
physical  process.  When  we  see  it  as  we  do,  in  this  ragged 
and  unintelligible  shape,  that  must  be  because,  in  our  ex- 
perience, we  are  but  playing  with  the  "  pebbles  on  the 
beach."  The  "  ocean  of  ultimate  reality  and  truth  "  must 
lie  beyond. 

In  all  the  foregoing  I  have  not  wished  to  create  diffi- 
culties ;  I  have  merely  found  them  where  they  exist.  Nor 
have  I  wished  to  make  light  of  the  world  of  our  modern 
realism.  On  the  contrary,  as  I  repeat,  those  who  study 
this  world  most  devotedly  are  often  the  first  to  acknow- 
ledge not  only  its  mystery,  but  its  probable  fragmentari- 
ness,  its  suggestion  of  a  hidden  truth  beyond.  "  Unknow- 
able," some  investigators  call  this  real  world  on  account 
of  such  paradoxes.  It  is,  however,  precisely  the  men  who 
thus  call  reality  unknowable,  who  seem  to  me  to  make 
light  of  the  serious  business  of  science.  What  one  learns 
from  such  puzzles  is  not  that  our  scientific  experience  is 
untrue,  but  that  it  is  n't  the  revealer  of  the  whole  truth, 
—  not  that  matter  and  energy  and  their  laws  are  illusions, 
but  that  they  are  partial  revelations  only  of  what,  seen 
from  a  higher  point  of  view,  would  have  to  get  the  unity 


336  THE   SPIRIT    OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

and  completeness  that  our  human  point  of  view  so  far 
lacks.  These  puzzles,  then,  do  not  turn  us  away  from  the 
world  of  science  ;  they  rather  encourage  us  to  philoso- 
phize as  to  the  meaning  of  the  presuppositions  that  lie  be- 
neath science.  If  you  find  a  significant  limitation  in 
your  knowledge,  philosophy  bids  you  scrutinize  the  bases 
of  your  knowledge  to  see  what  in  the  human  point  of  view 
it  is  that  is  the  source  of  this  limitation. 

Clifford,  whose  way  of  stating  the  hypothesis  of  the  law 
of  endless  consolidation  we  have  been  criticising,  was  him- 
self one  of  the  first  to  insist,  although  for  other  reasons, 
upon  the  probable  inadequacy  of  this  hypothesis.  Him- 
self one  of  the  most  admirable  minds  of  recent  British 
thought,  he  was  restlessly  at  work,  during  his  brief  career, 
at  the  task  of  criticising  the  fundamental  postulates  of 
science.  That  the  laws  of  physics  and  even  of  geometry 
are  probably  not  ultimate  truths  about  the  nature  of 
things,  he  used  to  argue  with  all  the  clearness  of  the  ma- 
thematician and  all  the  reflective  skill  of  the  born  specu- 
lator. Our  space  and  time,  with  their  paradoxical  infini- 
ties, he  used  to  regard  as  very  suspicious  appearances.  In 
criticising  him  I  have  therefore,  after  all,  only  borrowed 
certain  of  his  own  methods  of  thinking.  He  was  his  own 
keenest  critic.  He  dwelt  on  the  borderland  of  philosophy. 
It  is  a  source  of  deep  regret  that  he  never  lived  to  enter 
into  that  land  with  the  powers  which  he  had  been  training 
so  skillfully.  He  would  there  have  proved  himself  a 
great  conqueror. 

IV. 

The  considerations  of  the  foregoing  discussion  must 
have  been  weai'isome  enough  in  their  abstractness.  I 
hasten  to  suggest  their  more  concrete  bearings. 

The  problem  of  the  outer  order,  as  we  conceive  it  in 
these  modern  days,  is  the  problem  of  the  true  relation  of 
nature  and  evolution.  The  question  of  the  previous  dis- 
cussion has  been  only  a  highly  abstract  formulation  of 


NATURE  AND   EVOLUTION.  337 

this  problem.     The  seeming  world,  as  we  find  it  in  space 
and  time,  is  one  whose  matter  and  energy  are  permanent 
in  quantity,  while  their  distribution  is  endlessly  changing. 
The  changes  of  distribution  going  on  about  us  on  this 
planet  have  been,  for  what  we  call  a  long  time,  favorable 
to  evolution.    These  same  changes  will,  however,  so  far  as 
we  can  see,  lead  to  the  ultimate  extinction  of  evolution  on 
our  planet.     The  question  arises,  Does  the  same  relation  J  / 
between  the  nature  of  the  physical  world  and  the  evolu-  U 
tion,  the  progress,  of  the  significant  features  of  its  various 
parts,  hold  true  universally?     The  heavens,  too,  in  their 
wholeness,  suggest  to  us,  from  one  point  of  view,  a  vast 
process  of  cosmical  evolution.     Examined  more  carefully, 
however,  their  physical  phenomena  seem  to  show  that  this 
evolution  is  but  a  transient  stage  of  the  endless  world- 
process.     The  further  question  arises  hereupon :  Can  we  \ 
form  a  conception  of  the  world -process  in  its  true  and  I 
entire  nature,  and  so  make  out  how  it  is  actually  related  * 
to  what  we  call  evolution?     To  this  question  we  have 
found  thus  far  only  such  an  answer  as  suggests  that  the 
true  world,  whose  mere  show  is  embodied  in  these  physi- 
cal events  now  before  our  eyes,  is  at  all  events  very  in- 
adequately represented  by  them.     For  the  solution  of  our 
problem,  if  it  is  to  find  any,  we  must  search  deeper. 

In  what  direction  we  have  to  search,  our  argument  it- 
self very  readily  suggests.  It  is  plain  that  in  what  we 
said  about  the  incongruity  of  such  physical  conceptions 
as  involve  the  existence  of  an  actually  infinite  space  and 
time,  and  of  actually  infinite  distances  between  bodies,  we 
have  touched  close  upon  those  considerations  concerning 
the  objectivity  of  space  and  time  themselves  which  we 
have  now  learned  to  associate  with  the  name  of  Kant. 
What  if  the  foregoing  paradoxes  of  the  world  of  the 
"  running  down  "  energy,  and  of  the  endlessly  consolidat- 
ing matter,  were  due  to  the  fact  that  we  have  been  try- 
ing to  give  an  hypothetical  account  of  an  absolute  world- 


838  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

process  in  terms  of  human  forms  of  conception  and  of 
experience?  What  if  the  truly  complete  world-process 
does  not  occur  in  time  at  all,  but  can  only  be  conceived 
"under  the  form  of  eternity,"  as  Spinoza  would  have 
said  ?  "  Such  existence,"  said  Spinoza,  speaking'  of  eter- 
nal truths,  "  cannot  be  explained  by  means  of  continuance 
or  time."  What  if  both  the  permanent  laws  and  energy 
of  nature  on  the  one  hand,  and  what  we  know  as  the  pro- 
cess of  evolution  on  the  other,  were  but  the  temporal  sign 
of  something  whose  significance  is  to  be  otherwise  con- 
ceived ?  Doubtful  phrases  these,  one  may  say ;  yet,  after 
all,  what  more  doubtful  than  the  ultimate  truth  of  a 
physical  world  in  which  occur  such  paradoxical  processes 
as  we  have  been  examining? 

On  the  other  hand,  what  more  obvious  than  that  ifone 
conceives  man  as  the  product  of  a  physical  evolution  of 
the  type  that  we  have  heretofore  been  discussing,  if  one 
says  that  a  planet-crust,  at  a  particular  stage  of  its  his- 
tory, brought  forth  man,  while  the  heat  of  a  slowly  dying1 
sun  sustained  his  life,  as  it  had  done  the  lives  of  his 
countless  animal  ancestors  before  him,  —  if  one  holds  all 
this  to  be  true,  then  one  must  indeed  look  with  equal  won- 
der upon  the  power  of  such  a  creature  to  conceive  at  all 
of  the  real  universe,  or  of  the  eternal,  and  upon  the 
naivete  that  trusts,  without  analysis  and  criticism,  his  no- 
tions of  space  and  of  time,  his  natural  perceptions  of  the 
outer  world,  as  if  they  were  sure  to  be  well-founded.  The 
marvel  of  marvels,  that  this  being,  evolved  from  inorganic 
nature,  from  the  stuff  and  the  energy  of  a  cooling  solar 
system,  —  this  mortal  bit  of  mechanism  —  should  after  all 
know,  should  look  forwards  and  backwards  to  eternity, 
and  learn  so  much  of  the  nature  that  gave  him  birth,  — 
such  a  marvel  surely  calls  for  a  deeper  scrutiny.  The 
world  where  such  things  appear  is  surely  not  what  it 
seems ;  and  the  lesson  is  that,  in  the  critical  study  of  just 
this  knowing  power  of  ours,  in  the  scrutiny  of  our  most 


NATURE   AND   EVOLUTION.  339 

fundamental  ideas,  is  to  be  found,  if  anywhere,  the  key 
to  these  mysteries.  We  have  been  so  far  inquiring  into 
this  or  that  truth.  Now,  more  than*  ever,  we  see  the  need 
of  assailing  the  problem,  What  is  truth  itself?  What  are 
our  powers  to  know  ?  And  what  validity  have  our  ideas 
of  the  world  and  of  its  endless  life  ? 

And  thus  we  are  prepared,  by  the  paradoxes  of  the 
outer  order,  to  return  for  awhile,  in  order  to  seek  a  solu- 
tion of  them,  to  the  recesses  of  the  inner  life,  there  to 
examine  our  conceptions  of  the  world  once  more  with  a 
truly  philosophical  reflectiveness. 

Does  our  result  so  far  seem  nothing  but  a  sense  of  the 
mystery  of  things  ?  Then  remember  at  least  that,  as  all 
modern  thought  has  been  teaching  us  from  the  start,  the 
outer  world  is  n't  merely  foreign  to  us.  What  we  call  the 
dark  external  universe  yonder  is,  after  all,  our  universe, 
even  when  we  only  go  so  far  as  to  doubt  or  to  wonder 
about  it.  Whatever  the  success  or  the  failure  of  this  or 
that  idealistic  theory,  the  permanent  lesson  of  modern 
idealism  has  been  that  the  inner  and  the  outer  worlds 
must  have  organic  relations.  If  one  of  them  is  the  world 
of  the  thinker,  the  other  is  the  object  of  his  thought. 
Ignorant  as  he  may  be  of  numberless  facts  in  it,  it  has  to 
echo  somehow,  even  from  its  remotest  heavens,  the  magic 
words  that  utter  his  deepest  beliefs  about  it.  Philosophy 
promises  help,  just  because,  when  it  speaks  of  the  world 
whose  mystery  man's  mind  longs  to  penetrate,  it  also 
speaks  of  the  mind  itself  whose  nature  it  is  to  acknow- 
ledge, yes,  and  in  acknowledging,  just  so  far  to  penetrate 
the  mystery.  For,  as  we  shall  hereafter  see,  I  cannot 
recognize  a  rational  problem  even  as  a  problem,  unless  I 
already  know  a  good  deal  about  the  object  whose  nature 
gives  me  this  problem.  What  I  definitely  recognize  as 
unknown  must  have  such  a  knowable  nature  as  enables 
me  to  make  sure  that  it  is  unknown.  An  object  of  my 
conscious  and  rational  ignorance  is  still  an  object,  deter- 


340  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

mined  as  such  for  me  by  my  thought,  and  so  in  one  aspect 
known  to  me,  even  in  order  that  in  some  other  aspect  ito 
may  be  unknown.  Ignorance,  if  only  it  be  definite  igno- 
ranee,  is  sure  to  be  partial  knowledge.  In  so  far  as  our ' 
study  has  made  us  aware  of  the  mysteries  that  are  in  the 
world,  it  has  already  taught  us  much  about  the  world. 
We  don't  know  the  precise  value  of  the  ratio  of  the  cir- 
cumference of  a  circle  to  its  diameter.  That  is  a  good 
example  of  a  rational  mystery.  For  it  is  a  definite,  a 
highly  scientific  mystery.  But  see,  we  don't  know  this 
ratio  just  because  we  do  know  enough  about  the  nature 
of  a  circle  to  be  sure  that  this  ratio  is  absolutely  unsiate- 
able  in  any  finite  form.  Well,  even  so,  if  philosophy 
shows  us  in  any  definite  way  how  mysterious  the  world 
is,  that  will  only  be  because  philosophy  will  tell  us  enough 
about  the  true  nature  of  the  world  to  make  clear  to  us 
where  the  mystery  lies.  Vague  mysteries  are  the  amuse- 
ment of  fools.  Precise  and  rational  mysteries  are,  in  one 
sense,  the  goal  of  science.  In  defining  our  relation  to 
nature,  then,  in  making  clear  the  issues  of  science,  philo- 
sophy will  aid  us,  not  to  solve  all  mysteries,  as  a  dream 
might  pretend  to  do,  but  to  know  where  the  deepest  prob- 
lems of  the  world  lie,  and  thereby  to  show  us  something 
of  the  very  essence  of  the  reality  which  we  have  a  right 
to  find  obscure. 

It  is  in  this  spirit  that  I  shall  in  the  next  lecture  under- 
take to  give  you,  in  brief,  my  reasons  for  holding  that  an 
idealistic  interpretation  of  the  physical  world,  and  in  par- 
ticular the  theory  of  one  absolute  Self  as  the  truth  em- 
bodied in  both  nature  and  mind,  is  a  doctrine  that,  with- 
out any  presumptuous  effort  to  transcend  our  human 
powers,  may  be  explained  and  established. 


LECTTJKE  XT. 

REALITY   AND   IDEALISM :  —  THE   INNER   WORLD   AND   ITS 
MEANING. 

SUCH  brief  essays  as  I  am  to  embody  in  these  untech- 
nical  discussions  must  needs  fail  somewhere.  I  shall  be 
glad,  at  all  events,  if  they  do  not  fail  in  frank  state- 
ment of  opinion.  I  do  not  want  to  weary  you  with  bare 
assurances ;  I  do  not  want  to  leave  you  with  nothing  to 
remember  but  my  own  word  that  in  case  I  had  time,  I 
would  expound  my  meaning  and  my  reason  for  it ;  but  I 
do  want,  above  all  things,  in  so  far  as  I  see  any  glimpse 
of  truth,  to  risk  in  your  presence  a  plain  confession  of  it. 
If  I  must  come  short  of  the  purpose  of  these  lectures,  let 
it  be  in  technical  exactness,  since  once  for  all  that  belongs 
elsewhere ;  but  let  me  not  fail  of  showing  you  that  I 
have  convictions,  such  as  they  are,  whether  I  can  make 
you  agree  with  them  or  not.  I  do  not  know  how  you 
have  found  it,  but  for  my  part,  as  I  have  read  the  writ- 
ings of  some  of  the  modern  authors  whose  intelligence 
and  caution  I  most  value,  I  am  frequently  tormented 
with  their  tenderness  of  conscience  about  risking  a  state- 
ment of  their  personal  beliefs.  They  have  been  driven  to 
take  this  attitude,  no  doubt,  through  the  warning  which 
is  given  them  by  the  traditional  dogmatism  of  certain  the- 
ologians. Longing  to  escape  from  the  over-assurance  and 
intolerance  of  such,  the  writers  to  whom  I  now  refer  lay 
more  stress  upon  liberality,  caution,  patience,  and  learn- 
ing, than  even  upon  courage.  I  hope  that  I  do  not  under- 
value liberality  or  caution,  and  I  am  sure  that  I  long  for 
vastly  more  learning  and  patience  than  I  shall  ever  pos- 


342  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

sess ;  but,  after  all,  it  is  what  a  man  by  chance  believes, 
not  what  he  does  not  believe,  that  enables  him  to  be  of 
service  to  his  fellows  as  a  thinker;  and  whatever  frag- 
ment of  knowledge  one  may  possess  will  surely  remain 
undiscovered  unless  he  sometime  ventures  assertion  of  his 
temperament  for  whatever  it  may  happen  to  be  worth. 

The  business  of  the  present  lecture  is  to  tell  you  in 
what  sense  and  for  what  reasons  I  am  an  idealist.  In  the 
next  following  lectures,  returning  to  the  study  of  the  outer 
order,  I  shall  try  to  explain  how,  in  consequence,  I  ven- 
ture to  conceive  our  human  relationships  to  that  physical 
world  from  which  we  have  sprung  and  of  which  we  are  a 
part.  In  my  concluding  lecture  I  shall  set  forth  what 
practical  consequences  I  conceive  to  flow  from  my  philo- 
sophy concerning  that  which  constitutes  the  vocation  of 
man.  You  will  not  require  me  to  say  that,  as  to  all  these 
three  matters,  I  must  needs  be  not  only  very  fragmentary 
and  unpersuasive,  but  also  highly  unoriginal.  Other 
investigators  may  deal  with  novelties.  It  is  the  fate  of 
the  philosophical  student  to  be  cut  off,  by  his  very  task, 
from  all  but  a  very  relative  and  imperfect  sort  of  original- 
ity. He  is  simply  making  articulate  the  life  which  he  is 
privileged  to  enjoy.  He  invents  nothing;  he  only  con- 
fesses. Prophets  create  ideals ;  he  critically  expounds 
them.  Poets,  whose  relation  to  passion  is  more  direct 
and  momentary,  and  therefore  less  universal,  less  abstract, 
less  critical,  less  systematic,  have  for  this  very  reason  far 
more  of  the  inventive  about  them.  The  student  of  philo- 
sophy is  privileged  to  survey,  to  contemplate  life  from 
without,  to  reword.  Others  create ;  he  observes.  Con- 
sequently, were  a  philosophy  original,  it  would  be  ipso 
facto  untrue.  The  doctrines  of  philosophy  are  borrowed 
from  passion.  If,  for  instance,  idealism  is  true  at  all, 
that  is  because  all  of  you  are  already  idealists.  The  phi- 
losopher only  tells  you  so.  He  does  not  make  you  so. 
The  fashion  of  my  exposition  in  the  following  lectures  may 


REALITY   AND   IDEALISM.  343 

have  this  or  that  of  my  own  about  it.  The  matter  is  as 
old  as  it  is  true  ;  or,  if  it  is  not  old,  then  that  is  because 
it  is  not  true. 

I3ut  in  still  another  sense  is  this  discussion  unoriginal. 
The  time  is  long  past  when  really  intelligent  thinkers 
sought  to  do  anything  outside  of  intimate  relations  to  the 
history  of  thought.  It  still  happens,  indeed,  that  even  in 
our  day  some  lonesome  student  will  occasionally  publish 
a  philosophical  book  that  he  regards  as  entirely  revolu- 
tionary, as  digging  far  beneath  all  that  thought  has  ever 
yet  accomplished,  and  as  beginning  quite  afresh  the  labors 
of  human  reflection.  Such  men,  when  they  appear  nowa- 
days, as  once  in  a  while  they  do  appear,  are  anachro- 
uisms ;  and  you  will  always  find  them  either  ignorant  of 
vhe  history  of  the  very  subject  that  they  propose  to  revo- 
lutionize or  incapable  of  reading  this  history  intelligently. 
What  they  give  you  is  always  an  old  doctrine,  more  or 
less  disguised  in  a  poorly  novel  terminology,  and  much 
worse  thought  out  than  it  has  already  been  thought  out, 
time  after  time,  in  the  history  of  speculation.  It  is  one 
of  the  defects  of  the  current  liberalism  in  matters  of  opin- 
ion that  it  does  encourage,  only  too  often,  this  sort  of 
thinking  ,  and  the  sole  corrective  of  the  error  is  a  certain 
amount  of  philosophical  study  of  an  historical  sort  before 
one  begins  to  print  one's  speculations. 

Now,  as  you  know,  I  have  been  fearing  such  unhistori- 
cal  fashions  of  procedure  so  much  that  I  have  been  devot- 
ing myself  wholly,  during  the  first  part  of  these  lectures, 
to  telling  a  story,  and  adding  occasional  criticisms.  It  fol- 
ilows  that  I  have  no  doctrine  to  teach  save  the  one  that 
this  history  has  taught  me.  Personal  conviction,  then, 
offered  for  whatever  it  is  worth,  —  a  reflective  confession 
of  my  own  temperament  —  but  all  this  reflection  guided 
throughout  by  the  light  which  the  history  of  thought  gives 
me  about  what  is  really  human  and  worth  confessing 
in  this  temperament  of  mine,  —  such  must  be  the  busi« 


344  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

ness  of  these  concluding  lectures.  For  how  it  is  that  a 
man  can  thus  be  at  once  merely  the  critic  of  his  own 
deeper  nature,  and  still  merely  the  mouthpiece  for  the 
telling  of  the  lesson  that  he  has  learned  from  the  history 
of  thought,  you  will  now  after  all  these  discussions  surely 
be  able  to  see.  The  philosophical  student  confesses  his 
own  ideals  ;  for  what  others  has  he  to  confess  ?  He 
learns,  however,  from  history  what  amongst  his  ideals 
have  any  permanent  human  value  ;  for  the  history  of 
thought  is  the  school  in  which  alone  one  can  learn  to 
humanize  one's  reflective  processes,  and  to  distinguish  the 
accidental  from  the  essential  in  one's  temperament. 


I  am  very  sorry  that  I  cannot  state  my  idealism  in  a 
simple  and  unproblematic  form;  but  the  nature  of  the  doc- 
trine forbids.  I  must  first  of  all  puzzle  you  with  a  para- 
dox, by  saying  that  my  idealism  has  nothing  in  it  which 
contradicts  the  principal  propositions  of  what  is  nowa- 
days called  scientific  Agnosticism,  in  so  far,  namely,  as 
this  agnosticism  relates  to  that  world  of  facts  of  experi- 
ence which  man  sees  and  feels  and  which  science  studies. 
Of  such  agnosticism  we  learned  something  in  our  last 
lecture.  But  I  must  go  on  to  say  that  the  fault  of  our 
modern  so-called  scientific  agnosticism  is  only  that  it  has 
failed  to  see  how  the  world  in  space  and  time,  the  world 
of  causes'  and  effects,  the  world  of  matter  and  of  finite 
mind,  whereof  we  know  so  little  and  long  to  know  so 
much,  is  a  very  subordinate  part  of  reality.  It  will  be 
my  effort  to  explain  how  we  do  know  something  very 
deep  and  vital  about  what  reality  is  in  its  innermost 
essence.  My  explanation  will  indeed  be  very  poor  and 
fragmentary,  but  the  outcome  of  it  will  be  the  very  highly 
paradoxical  assertion  that  while  the  whole  finite  world  is 
full  of  dark  problems  for  us,  there  is  absolutely  nothing, 
not  even  the  immediate  facts  of  our  sense  at  this  moment, 


.REALITY   AND   IDEALISM.  345 

BO  clear,  so  certain,  as  the  existence  and  the  unity  of  that 
infinite  conscious  Self  of  whom  we  have  now  heard  so 
much.  About  the  finite  world,  as  I  shall  assert,  we  know 
in  general  only  what  experience  teaches  us  and  science 
records.  There  is  nothing  in  the  universe  absolutely  sure 
except  the  Infinite.  That  will  be  the  curious  sort  of 
agnosticism  that  I  shall  try  in  a  measure  to  expound. 
Of  the  infinite  we  know  that  it  is  one  and  conscious.  Of 
the  finite  things,  that  is,  of  the  particular  fashions  of  be- 
havior in  terms  of  which  the  infinite  Consciousness  gives 
himself  form  and  plays  the  world-game,  we  know  only 
what  we  experience.  Yet  doubtless  it  will  at  once  seem 
to  you  that  in  one  important  respect  my  announced  doc- 
trine is  in  obvious  conflict  with  a  wise  agnosticism.  For 
is  it  not  confessedly  anthromorphic  in  its  character? 
And  is  not  anthropomorphism  precisely  the  defect  that 
modern  thinkers  have  especially  taught  us  to  avoid  ? 

Anthropomorphism  was  the  savage  view,  which  led 
primitive  man  to  interpret  extraordinary  natural  events 
as  expressions  of  the  will  of  beings  like  himself.  How- 
ever he  came  by  his  fancy,  whether  by  first  believing  in 
the  survival  of  the  ghosts  of  his  ancestors,  and  then  con- 
ceiving them  as  the  agents  who  produced  lightning,  and 
who  moved  the  sun,  or  by  a  simple  and  irreducible  instinct 
of  his  childish  soul,  leading  him  to  see  himself  in  nature, 
and  to  regard  it  all  as  animate  ;  in  any  case  he  made  the 
bad  induction,  created  the  gods  in  his  own  image,  and 
then  constituted  them  as  the  causes  of  all  natural  events. 
His  ignorant  self -multiplication  we  must  avoid.  Shall 
our  limited  inner  experience  be  the  only  test  of  what 
sorts  of  causation  may  exist  in  the  world?  What  we 
know  is  that  events  happen  to  us,  and  happen  in  a  certain 
fixed  order.  We  do  not  know  the  ultimate  causes  of  these 
events.  If  we  lived  on  some  other  planet,  doubtless 
causes  of  a  very  novel  sort  would  become  manifest  to  us, 
and  our  whole  view  of  nature  would  change.  It  is  self- 


346  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

contradictory,  it  is  absurd,  to  make  our  knowledge  the 
measure  of  all  that  is !  The  real  world  that  causes  our 
experience  is  a  great  x,  wholly  unknown  to  us  except  in 
a  few  select  phenomena,  which  happen  to  fall  within  our 
ken.  How  wild  to  guess  about  the  mysteries  of  the  infi- 
nite ! 

But  now  this  agnosticism,  too,  as  I  assure  you,  I  ar- 
dently and  frankly  agree  with,  so  far  as  it  concerns  itself 
with  precisely  that  world  in  which  it  pretends  to  move, 
and  to  which  it  undertakes  to  apply  itself.  I  have  no 
desire  to  refute  it.  Touching  all  the  world  in  space  and 
time  beyond  experience,  in  the  scientific  sense  of  the  term 
experience,  I  repeat  that  I  know  nothing  positive.  I 
know,  for  instance,  nothing  about  the  stratification  of 
Saturn,  or  the  height  of  the  mountains  on  the  other  side 
of  the  moon.  For  the  same  reason,  also,  I  know  nothing 
of  any  anthropomorphic  daemons  or  gods  here  or  there  in 
nature,  acting  as  causes  of  noteworthy  events.  Of  these  I 
know  nothing,  because  science  has  at  present  no  need  for 
such  hypotheses.  There  may  be  such  beings  ;  there  doubt- 
less are  in  nature  many  curious  phenomena;  but  what 
curiosities  further  experience  might  show  us,  we  must 
wait  for  experience  to  point  out  ere  we  shall  know.  I  re- 
peat, in  its  own  world,  agnosticism  is  in  all  these  respects 
in  the  right.  For  reasons  that  you  will  later  see,  I  object 
indeed  to  the  unhappy  word  unknowable.  In  the  world 
of  experience,  as  in  the  world  of  abstractor  problems, 
there  are  infinitely  numerous  things  unknown  to  us.  But 
there  is  no  rational  question  that  could  not  somehow  be 
answered  by  a  sufficiently  wise  person.  There  are  things 
relatively  unknowable  for  us,  not  things  absolutely  so. 
There  are  numberless  experiences  that  I  stall  never  have, 
in  my  individual  capacity;  and  there  are  numberless 
problems  that  I  shall  never  solve.  But  the  only  absolute 
insoluble  mysteries,  as  I  shall  hereafter  point  out  to  you, 
would  be  the  questions  that  it  is  essentially  absurd  to  ask. 


REALITY  AND  IDEALISM.  347 

Still,  not  to  quarrel  over  words,  what  many  agnostics 
mean  by  unknowable  is  simply  the  stubbornly  unknown, 
and,  in  that  sense,  I  fully  agree  and  indeed  insist  that 
human  knowledge  is  an  island  in  the  vast  ocean  of  mys- 
tery, and  that  numberless  questions,  which  it  deeply  con- 
cerns humanity  to  answer,  will  never  be  answered  so  long 
as  we  are  in  our  present  limited  state,  bound  to  one  planet, 
and  left  for  our  experience  to  our  senses,  our  emotions, 
and  our  moral  activities. 

But,  if  I  thus  accept  this  agnostic  view  of  the  world  of 
experience,  what  chance  is  left,  you  will  say,  for  anything 
like  an  absolute  system  of  philosophy?  In  what  sense 
can  I  pretend  to  talk  of  idealism,  as  giving  any  final  view 
of  the  whole  nature  of  things  ?  In  what  sense,  above  all, 
can  I  pretend  to  be  a  theist,  and  to  speak  of  the  absolute 
Self  as  the  very  essence  and  life  of  the  whole  world  ?  For 
is  this  not  mere  anthropomorphism?  Isn't  it  making 
our  private  human  experience  the  measure  of  all  reality  ? 
Is  n't  it  making  hypotheses  in  terms  of  our  experience, 
about  things  beyond  our  experience?  Isn't  it  making 
our  petty  notions  of  causation  a  basis  for  judging  of  the 
nature  of  the  unknown  first  cause  ?  Is  n't  it  another  case 
of  what  the  savage  did  when  he  saw  his  gods  in  the  thun- 
der-clouds, because  he  conceived  that  causes  just  like  his 
own  angry  moods  must  be  here  at  work  ?  Surely,  at  best, 
this  is  sentiment,  faith,  mystical  dreaming.  It  can't  be 
philosophy. 

I  answer,  just  to  change  our  whole  view  of  the  deeper 
reality  of  things,  just  to  turn  away  our  attention  from  any 
illusive  search  for  first  causes  in  the  world  of  experience, 
just  to  get  rid  of  fanciful  faith  about  the  gods  in  outer 
nature,  and  just  to  complete  the  spiritual  task  of  agnosti- 
cism by  sending  us  elsewhere  than  to  phenomena  for  the 
true  and  inner  nature  of  things,  —  for  just  this  end  was 
the  whole  agony  of  modern  philosophy  endured  by  those 
who  have  wrestled  with  its  problems.  Is  any  one  agnos- 


348  THE  SPIKIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

tic  about  the  finite  world  ?  Then  I  more.  I  know  no- 
thing of  any  first  cause  in  the  world  of  appearances  yon- 
der. I  see  no  gods  in  the  thunder  clouds,  no  Keplerian 
angels  carrying  the  planets  in  conic  sections  around  the 
sun ;  I  imagine  no  world-maker  far  back  in  the  ages, 
beginning  the  course  of  evolution.  Following  Laplace,  I 
need,  once  more,  no  such  hypothesis.  I  await  the  ver- 
dict of  science  about  all  facts  and  events  in  physical 
nature.  And  yet  that  is  just  why  I  am  an  idealist.  It 
is  my  agnosticism  about  the  causes  of  my  experience  that 
makes  me  search  elsewhere  than  amongst  causes  for  the 
meaning  of  experience.  The  outer  world  which  the 
agnostic  sees  and  despairs  of  knowing  is  not  the  region 
where  I  look  for  light.  The  living  God,  whom  idealism 
knows,  is  not  the  first  cause  in  any  physical  sense,  at  all. 
No  possible  experience  could  find  him  as  a  thing  amongst 
things  or  show  any  outer  facts  that  would  prove  his  exist- 
ence. He  is  n't  anywhere  in  space  or  in  time.  He  makes 
from  without  no  worlds.  He  is  no  hypothesis  of  empiri- 
cal science.  But  he  is  all  the  more  real  for  that,  and  his 
existence  is  all  the  surer.  For  causes  are,  after  all,  very 
petty  and  subordinate  truths  in  the  world,  and  facts, 
phenomena,  as  such,  could  never  demonstrate  any  impor- 
tant spiritual  truth.  The  absolute  Self  simply  does  n't 
cause  the  world.  The  very  idea  of  causation  belongs 
to  things  of  finite  experience,  and  is  only  a  mythological 
~  term  when  applied  to  the  real  truth  of  things.  Not  be- 
cause I  interpret  the  causes  of  my  experience  in  terms  of 
my  limited  ideas  of  causation  is  the  universe  of  God  a 
live  thing  to  me,  but  for  a  far  deeper  reason ;  for  a  rea- 
son which  deprives  this  world  of  agnosticism  of  all  sub- 
stantiality and  converts  it  once  for  all  into  mere  show.  I 
am  ignorant  of  this  world  just  because  it  is  a  show-world. 
And  this  deeper  reason  of  the  idealist  I  may  as  well 
first  suggest  in  a  form  which  may  perhaps  seem  just  now 
even  more  mysterious  than  the  problem  which  I  solve  by 


REALITY   AND   IDEALISM.  349 

means  of  it.  My  reason  for  believing  that  there  is  one  ab- 
solute World-Self,  who  embraces  and  is  all  reality,  whose 
consciousness  includes  and  infinitely  transcends  our  own, 
in  whose  unity  ail  the  laws  of  nature  and  all  the  mysteries 
of  experience  must  have  their  solution  and  their  very 
being,  —  is  simply  that  the  profoundest  agnosticism  which 
you  can  possibly  state  in  any  coherent  fashion,  the  deepest 
doubt  which  you  can  any  way  formulate  about  the  world  or 
the  things  that  are  therein,  already  presupposes,  implies, 
demands,  asserts,  the  existence  of  such  a  World-Self. 
The  agnostic,  I  say,  already  asserts  this  existence  — 
unconsciously,  of  course,  as  a  rule,  but  none  the  less  inev- 
itably. For,  as  we  shall  find,  there  is  no  escape  from  the 
infinite  Self  except  by  self-contradiction.  Ignorant  as  I 
am  about  first  causes,  I  am  at  least  clear,  therefore,  about 
the  Self.  If  you  deny  him,  you  already  in  denying  affirm 
him.  You  reckon  ill  wken  you  leave  him  out.  \  Him  when 
you  fly,  he  is  the  wings.  He  is  the  doubter  and  the 
doubt.  You  in  vain  flee  from  his  presence.  The  wings 
of  the  morning  will  not  aid  you.  Nor  do  I  mean  all  this 
now  as  any  longer  a  sort  of  mysticism.  This  truth  is,  I 
assure  you,  simply  a  product  of  dry  logic.  When  I  try 
to  tell  you  about  it  in  detail,  I  shall  weary  you  by  my 
wholly  unmystical  analysis  of  commonplaces.  Here  is, 
in  fact,  as  we  shall  soon  find,  the  very  presupposition  of 
presuppositions.  You  cannot  stir,  nay,  you  cannot  even 
stand  still  in  thought  without  it.  Nor  is  it  an  unfamiliar 
idea.  On  the  contrary,  philosophy  finds  trouble  in  bring- 
ing it  to  your  consciousness  merely  because  it  is  so  famil- 
iar. When  they  told  us  in  childhood  that  we  could  not 
see  God  just  because  he  was  everywhere,  just  because  his 
omnipresence  gave  us  no  chance  to  discern  him  and  to  fix 
our  eyes  upon  him,  they  told  us  a  deep  truth  in  allegori- 
cal fashion.  The  infinite  Self,  as  we  shall  learn,  is  actu- 
ally asserted  by  you  in  every  proposition  you  utter,  is 
there  at  the  heart,  so  to  speak,  of  the  very  multiplication 


850  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

table.  The  Self  is  so  little  a  thing  merely  guessed  at  as 
the  unknowable  source  of  experience,  that  already,  in  the 
very  least  of  daily  experiences  you  unconsciously  know 
him  as  something  present.  This,  as  we  shall  find,  is  the 
deepest  tragedy  of  our  finitude,  that  continually  he  comes 
to  his  own,  and  his  own  receive  him  not,  that  he  becomes 
flesh  in  every  least  incident  of  our  lives ;  whilst  we,  gazing 
with  wonder  upon  his  world,  search  here  and  there  for 
first  causes,  look  for  miracles,  and  beg  him  to  show  us  the 
Father,  since  that  alone  will  suffice  us.  No  wonder  that 
thus  we  have  to  remain  agnostics.  "  Hast  thou  been  so 
long  time  with  me,  and  yet  hast  thou  not  known  me  ? ' 
Such  is  the  eternal  answer  of  the  Logos  to  every  doubting 
question.  Seek  him  not  as  an  outer  hypothesis  to  explain 
experience.  Seek  him  not  anywhere  yonder  in  the  clouds. 
He  is  no  "  thing  in  itself."  But  for  all  that,  experience 
contains  him.  He  is  the  reality,  the  soul  of  it.  "  Did  not 
our  heart  burn  within  us  while  he  talked  with  us  by  the 
way  ?  "  And,  as  we  shall  see,  he  does  not  talk  merely  tc 
our  hearts.  He  reveals  himself  to  our  coolest  scrutiny. 

ii. 

But  enough  of  speculative  boasting.  Coming  to  closer 
quarters  with  my  topic,  I  must  remind  you  that  idealism 
has  two  aspects.  It  is.  for  the  first,  a  kind  of  analysis  of 
the  world,  an  analysis  which  so  far  has  no  absolute  char- 
acter about  it,  but  which  undertakes,  in  a  fashion  that 
might  be  acceptable  to  any  skeptic,  to  examine  what  you 
mean  by  all  the  things,  whatever  they  are,  that  you  be- 
lieve in  or  experience.  This  idealistic  analysis  consists 
merely  in  a  pointing  out,  by  various  devices,  that  the 
world  of  your  knowledge,  whatever  it  contains,  is  through 
and  through  such  stuff  as  ideas  are  made  of,  that  you 
never  in  your  life  believed  in  anything  definable  but  ideas, 
that,  as  Berkeley  put  it,  "  this  whole  choir  of  heaven  and 
furniture  of  earth  "  is  nothing  for  any  of  us  but  a  system 


REALITY  AND  IDEALISM.  351 

of  ideas  which  govern  our  belief  and  our  conduct.  Such 
idealism  has  numerous  statements,  interpretations,  embod- 
iments :  forms  part  of  the  most  various  systems  and  expe- 
riences, is  consistent  with  Berkeley's  theism,  with  Fichte's 
ethical  absolutism,  with  Professor  Huxley's  agnostic  em- 
piricism, with  Clifford's  mind-stuff  theory,  with  countless 
other  theories  that  have  used  such  idealism  as  a  part  of 
their  scheme.  In  this  aspect  idealism  is  already  a  little 
puzzling  to  our  natural  consciousness,  but  it  becomes 
quickly  familiar,  in  fact  almost  commonplace,  and  seems 
after  all  to  alter  our  practical  faith  or  to  solve  our  deeper 
problems  very  little. 

The  other  aspect  of  idealism  is  the  one  which  gives  us 
our  notion  of  the  absolute  Self.  To  it  the  first  is  only 
preparatory.  This  second  aspect  is  the  one  which  from 
Kant,  until  the  present  time,  has  formed  the  deeper  prob- 
lem of  thought.  Whenever  the  world  has  become  more 
conscious  of  its  significance,  the  work  of  human  philoso- 
phy will  be,  not  nearly  ended  (Heaven  forbid  an  end!), 
but  for  the  first  time  fairly  begun.  For  then,  in  criti- 
cally estimating  our  passions,  we  shall  have  some  truer 
sense  of  whose  passions  they  are. 

I  begin  with  the  first  and  the  less  significant  aspect  of 
idealism.  Our  world,  I  say,  whatever  it  may  contain,  is 
such  stuff  as  ideas  are  made  of.  This  preparatory  sort 
of  idealism  is  the  one  that,  as  I  just  suggested,  Berkeley 
made  prominent,  and,  after  a  fashion  familiar.  I  must 
state  it  in  my  own  way,  although  one  in  vain  seeks  to 
attain  novelty  in  illustrating  so  frequently  described  a 
view. 

Here,  then,  is  our  so  real  world  of  the  senses,  full  of 
light  and  warmth  and  sound.  If  anything  could  be  solid 
and  external,  surely,  one  at  first  will  say,  it  is  this  world. 
Hard  facts,  not  mere  ideas,  meet  us  on  every  hand.  Ideas 
any  one  can  mould  as  he  wishes.  Not  so  facts.  In  idea 
socialists  can  dream  out  Utopias,  disappointed  lovers  can 


352  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

imagine  themselves  successful,  beggars  can  ride  horses, 
wanderers  can  enjoy  the  fireside  at  home.  In  the  realm 
of  facts,  society  organizes  itself  as  it  must,  rejected  lovers 
stand  for  the  time  defeated,  beggars  are  alone  with  their 
wishes,  oceans  roll  drearily  between  home  and  the  wan- 
derer. Yet  this  world  of  fact  is,  after  all,  not  entirely 
stubborn,  not  merely  hard.  The  strenuous  will  can  mould 
facts.  We  can  form  our  world,  in  part,  according  to  our 
ideas.  Statesmen  influence  the  social  order,  lovers  woo 
afresh,  wanderers  find  the  way  home.  But  thus  to  alter 
the  world  we  must  work,  and  just  because  the  laborer  is 
worthy  of  his  hire,  it  is  well  tjaat  the  real  world  should 
thus  have  such  fixity  of  things  as  enables  us  to  anticipate 
what  facts  will  prove  lasting,  and  to  see  of  the  travail  of 
our  souls  when  it  is  once  done.  This,  then,  is  the  pre- 
supposition of  life,  that  we  work  in  a  real  world,  where 
house-walls  do  not  melt  away  as  in  dreams,  but  stand 
firm  against  the  winds  of  many  winters,  and  can  be  felt 
as  real.  We  do  not  wish  to  find  facts  wholly  plastic  ;  we 
want  them  to  be  stubborn,  if  only  the  stubbornness  be  not 
altogether  unmerciful.  Our  will  makes  constantly  a  sort 
of  agreement  with  the  world,  whereby,  if  the  world  will 
continually  show  some  respect  to  the  will,  the  will  shall 
consent  to  be  strenuous  in  its  industry.  Interfere  with 
the  reality  of  my  world,  and  you  therefore  take  the  very 
life  and  heart  out  of  my  will. 

The  reality  of  the  world,  however,  when  thus  defined 
in  terms  of  its  stubbornness,  its  firmness  as  against  the 
will  that  has  not  conformed  to  its  laws,  its  kindly  rigidity 
in  preserving  for  us  the  fruits  of  our  labors,  —  such  real- 
ity, I  say,  is  still  something  wholly  unanalyzed.  In  what 
does  this  stubbornness  consist?  Surely,  many  different 
sorts  of  reality,  as  it  would  seem,  may  be  stubborn. 
Matter  is  stubborn  when  it  stands  in  hard  walls  against 
us,  or  rises  in  vast  mountain  ranges  before  the  path-find- 
ing explorer.  But  minds  can  be  stubborn  also.  The 


REALITY  AND   IDEALISM.  353 

lonely  wanderer,  who  watches  by  the  seashore  the  waves 
that  roll  between  him  and  his  home,  talks  of  cruel  facts, 
material  barriers  that,  just  because  they  are  material,  and 
not  ideal,  shall  be  the  irresistible  foes  of  his  longing 
heart.  "  In  wish,"  he  says,  "  I  am  with  my  dear  ones, 
but  alas,  wishes  cannot  cross  oceans !  Oceans  are  mate- 
rial facts,  in  the  cold  outer  world.  Would  that  the  world 
of  the  heart  were  all !  "  But  alas  !  to  the  rejected  lover 
the  world  of  the  heart  is  all,  and  that  is  just  his  woe. 
Were  the  barrier  between  him  and  his  beloved  only  made 
of  those  stubborn  material  facts,  only  of  walls  or  of 
oceans,  how  lightly  might  his  will  erelong  transcend  them 
all !  Matter  stubborn  !  Outer  nature  cruelly  the  foe  of 
ideas  !  Nay,  it  is  just  an  idea  that  now  opposes  him,  — 
just  an  idea,  and  that,  too,  in  the  mind  of  the  maiden  he 
loves.  But  in  vain  does  he  calls  this  stubborn  bit  of  dis- 
dain a  merely  ideal  fact.  No  flint  was  ever  more  definite 
in  preserving  its  identity  and  its  edge  than  this  disdain 
may  be.  Place  me  for  a  moment,  then,  in  an  external  world 
that  shall  consist  wholly  of  ideas,  —  the  ideas,  namely, 
of  other  people  about  me,  a  world  of  maidens  who  shall 
scorn  me,  of  old  friends  who  shall  have  learned  to  hate 
me,  of  angels  who  shall  condemn  me,  of  God  who  shall 
judge  me.  In  what  piercing  north  winds,  amidst  what 
fields  of  ice,  in  the  labyrinths  of  what  tangled  forests,  in 
the  depths  of  what  thick-walled  dungeons,  on  the  edges 
of  what  tremendous  precipices,  should  I  be  more  gen- 
uinely in  the  presence  of  stubborn  and  unyielding  facts 
than  in  that  conceived  world  of  ideas !  So,  as  one  sees, 
I  by  no  means  deprive  my  world  of  stubborn  reality, 
if  I  merely  call  it  a  world  of  ideas.  On  the  contrary,  as 
every  teacher  knows,  the  ideas  of  the  people  are  often  the 
most  difficult  of  facts  to  influence.  We  were  wrong,  then, 
when  we  said  that  whilst  matter  was  stubborn,  ideas  could 
be  moulded  at  pleasure.  Ideas  are  often  the  most  impla- 
cable of  facts.  Even  my  own  ideas,  the  facts  of  my  ow« 


354  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

inner  life,  may  cruelly  decline  to  be  plastic  to  my  wish. 
The  wicked  will  that  refuses  to  be  destroyed,  —  what  rock 
has  often  more  consistency  for  our  senses  than  this  will 
has  for  our  inner  consciousness !  The  king,  in  his  soli- 
loquy in  "  Hamlet,"  —  in  what  an  unyielding  world  of 
hard  facts  does  he  not  move !  and  yet  they  are  now  only 
inner  facts.  The  fault  is  past ;  he  is  alone  with  his  con- 
science. 

«  What  rests  ? 

Try  what  repentance  can.     What  can  it  not  ? 

Yet  what  can  it,  when  one  cannot  repent  ? 

O  wretched  state  !     O  bosom  black  as  death  ! 

O  limed  soul,  that,  struggling  to  be  free, 

Art  more  engaged  !  " 

No,  here  are  barriers  worse  than  any  material  chains. 
The  world  of  ideas  has  its  own  horrible  dungeons  and 
chasms.  Let  those  who  have  refuted  Bishop  Berkeley's 
idealism  by  the  wonder  why  he  did  not  walk  over  every 
precipice  or  into  every  fire  if  these  things  existed  only  in 
his  idea,  let  such,  I  say,  first  try  some  of  the  fires  and  the 
precipices  of  the  inner  life,  ere  they  decide  that  dangers 
cease  to  be  dangers  as  soon  as  they  are  called  ideal,  or 
even  subjectively  ideal  in  me. 

Many  sorts  of  reality,  then,  may  be  existent  at  the 
heart  of  any  world  of  facts.  But  this  bright  and  beauti- 
ful sense-world  of  ours,  —  what,  amongst  these  many  possi- 
ble sorts  of  reality,  does  that  embody  ?  Are  the  stars  and 
the  oceans,  the  walls  and  the  pictures,  real  as  the  maiden's 
heart  is  real,  —  embodying  the  ideas  of  somebody,  but 
none  the  less  stubbornly  real  for  that  ?  Or  can  we  make 
something  else  of  their  reality  ?  For,  of  course,  that  the 
stars  and  the  oceans,  the  walls  and  the  pictures  have  some 
sort  of  stubborn  reality,  just  as  the  minds  of  our  fellows 
have,  our  analysis  so  far  does  not  for  an  instant  think  of 
denying.  Our  present  question  is,  what  sort  of  reality  ? 
Consider,  then,  in  detail,  certain  aspects  of  the  reality 


REALITY   AND   IDEALISM.  3-35 

that  seems  to  be  exemplified  in  our  sense-world.  The 
sublimity  of  the  sky,  the  life  and  majesty  of  the  ocean, 
the  interest  of  a  picture,  —  to  what  sort  of  real  facts  do 
these  belong  ?  Evidently  here  we  shall  have  no  question. 
So  far  as  the  sense-world  is  beautiful,  is  majestic,  is  sub- 
lime, this  beauty  and  dignity  exist  only  for  the  appreciative 
observer.  If  they  exist  beyond  him,  they  exist  only  for 
some  other  mind,  or  as  the  thought  and  embodied  purpose 
of  some  universal  soul  of  nature.  A  man  who  sees  the 
same  world,  but  who  has  no  eye  for  the  fairness  of  it,  will 
find  all  the  visible  facts,  but  will  catch  nothing  of  their 
value.  At  once,  then,  the  sublimity  and  beauty  of  the 
world  are  thus  truths  that  one  who  pretends  to  insight 
ought  to  see,  and  they  are  truths  which  have  no  meaning 
except  for  such  a  beholder's  mind,  or  except  as  embody- 
ing the  thought  of  the  mind  of  the  world.  So  here,  at 
least,  is  so  much  of  the  outer  world  that  is  ideal,  just  as 
the  coin  or  the  jewel  or  the  bank-note  or  the  bond  has  its 
value  not  alone  in  its  physical  presence,  but  in  the  idea 
that  it  symbolizes  to  a  beholder's  mind,  or  to  the  relatively 
universal  thought  of  the  commercial  world.  But  let  us 
look  a  little  deeper.  Surely,  if  the  objects  yonder  are 
unideal  and  outer,  odors  and  tastes  and  temperatures  do 
not  exist  in  these  objects  in  just  the  way  in  which  they 
exist  in  us.  Part  of  the  being  of  these  properties,  at 
least,  if  not  all  of  it,  is  ideal  and  exists  for  us,  or  at  best 
is  once  more  the  embodiment  of  the  thought  or  purpose 
of  some  world-mind.  About  tastes  you  cannot  dispute, 
because  they  are  not  only  ideal  but  personal.  For  the 
benumbed  tongue  and  palate  of  diseased  bodily  condi- 
tions, all  things  are  tasteless.  As  for  temperatures,  a  well 
known  experiment  will  show  how  the  same  water  may 
seem  cold  to  one  hand  and  warm  to  the  other.  But  even 
so,  colors  and  sounds  are  at  least  in  part  ideal.  Their 
causes  may  have  some  other  sort  of  reality ;  but  colors 
themselves  are  not  in  the  things,  since  they  change  with 


356  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

the  light  that  falls  on  the  things,  vanish  in  the  dark 
(whilst  the  things  remained  unchanged),  and  differ  for 
different  eyes.  And  as  for  sounds,  both  the  pitch  and  the 
quality  of  tones  depend  for  us  upon  certain  interesting 
peculiarities  of  our  hearing  organs,  and  exist  in  nature 
only  as  voiceless  sound-waves  trembling  through  the  air. 
All  such  sense  qualities,  then,  are  ideal.  The  world  yon- 
der may  —  yes,  must  —  have  attributes  that  give  reasons 
why  these  qualities  are  thus  felt  by  us ;  for  so  we  assume. 
The  world  yonder  may  even  be  a  mind  that  thus  expresses 
its  will  to  us.  But  these  qualities  need  not,  nay,  cannot 
resemble  the  ideas  that  are  produced  in^as7uuless,  indeed, 
that  is  because  these  qualities  have  ^place  asjdeas  in  some 
world-mind.  Sound-waves  in  the  air  are  no^  like  our 
musical  sensations ;  nor  is  the  symphony  as  we  hear  it 
and  feel  it  any  physical  property  of  the  strings  and  the 
wind  instruments ;  nor  are  the  ether- vibrations  that  the 
sun  sends  us  like  our  ideas  when  we  see  the  sun ;  nor  yet 
is  the  flashing  of  moonlight  on  the  water  as  we  watch 
the  waves  a  direct  expression  of  the  actual  truths  of  fluid 
motion  as  the  water  embodies  them. 

Unless,  then,  the  real  physical  world  yonder  is  itself 
the  embodiment  of  some  world  -  spirit's  ideas,  which  he 
conveys  to  us,  unless  it  is  real  only  as  the  maiden's  heart 
is  real,  namely,  as  itself  a  conscious  thought,  then  we  have 
so  far  but  one  result :  that  real  world  (to  repeat  one  of 
the  commonplaces  of  modern  popular  science)  is  in  itself, 
apart  from  somebody's  eyes  and  tongue  and  ears  and 
touch,  neither  colored  nor  tasteful,  neither  cool  nor  warm, 
neither  light  nor  dark,  neither  musical  nor  silent.  All 
these  qualities  belong  to  our  ideas,  being  indeed  none  the 
less  genuine  facts  for  that,  but  being  in  so  far  ideal  facts. 
We  must  see  colors  when  we  look,  we  must  hear  music 
when  there  is  playing  in  our  presence ;  but  this  must  is  a 
must  that  consists  in  a  certain  irresistible  presence  of  an 
idea  in  us  under  certain  conditions.  That  this  idea  must 


REALITY   AND   IDEALISM.  357 

come  is,  indeed,  a  truth  as  unalterable,  once  more,  as  the 
king's  settled  remorse  in  Hamlet.  But  like  this  remorse, 
again,  it  exists  as  an  ideal  truth,  objective,  but  through 
and  through  objective  for  somebody,  and  not  apart  from 
anybody.  What  this  truth  implies  we  have  yet  to  see. 
So  far  it  is  only  an  ideal  truth  for  the  beholder,  with  just 
the  bare  possibility  that  behind  it  all  there  is  the  thought 
of  a  world-spirit.  And,  in  fact,  so  far  we  must  all  go  to- 
gether if  we  reflect. 

But  now,  at  this  point,  the  Berkeleyan  idealist  goes  ono 
step  further.  The  real  outsiae  world  that  is  still  left  un- 
explained and  unanalyzed  after  its  beauty,  its  warmth,  its 
odors,  its  tastes,  its  colors,  and  its  tones,  have  been  rele- 
gated to  the  realm  of  ideal  truths,  what  do  you  now  mean 
by  calling  it  real  ?  No  doubt  it  is  known  as  somehow  real, 
but  what  is  this  reality  known  as  being  ?  If  you  know 
that  this  world  is  still  there  and  outer,  as  by  hypothesis 
you  know,  you  are  bound  to  say  what  this  outer  character 
implies  for  your  thought.  And  here  you  have  trouble. 
Is  the  outer  world,  as  it  exists  outside  of  your  ideas,,  or  of 
anybody's  ideas,  something  having  shape,  filling  space, 
possessing  solidity,  full  of  moving  things  ?  That  would 
in  the  first  place  seem  evident.  The  sound  is  n't  outside 
of  me,  but  the  sound-waves,  you  say,  are.  The  colors  are 
ideal  facts ;  but  the  ether-waves  don't  need  a  mind  to 
know  them.  Warmth  is  ideal,  but  the  physical  fact  called 
heat,  this  playing  to  and  fro  of  molecules,  is  real,  and  is 
there  apart  from  any  mind.  But  once  more,  is  this  so 
evident?  What  do  I  mean  by  the  shape  of  anything,  or 
by  the  size  of  anything  ?  Don't  I  mean  just  the  idea  of 
shape  or  of  size  that  I  am  obliged  to  get  under  certain 
circumstances  ?  Whatsis  the  meaning  of  any  property 
that  J  give  to  the  real  outer  world  ?  How  can  I  express 
that  property  except  in  case  I  think  it  in  terms  of  my 
jdeas?  As  for  the  sound-waves  and  the  ether-waves,  what 
are  they  but  things  ideally  conceived  to  explain  the  facts 


858  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

of  nature  ?  The  conceptions  have  doubtless  their  truth; 
but  it  is  an  ideal  truth.  What  I  mean  by  saying  that  trie 
things  yonder  have  shape  and  size  and  trembling  mole- 
cules, and  that  there  is  air  with  sound-waves,  and  ether 
with  light-waves  in  it, —  what  I  mean  by  all  this  is  that 
experience  forces  upon  me,  directly  or  indirectly,  a  vast" 
system  of  ideas,  which  may  indeed  be  founded  in  truth 
beyond  me,  which  in  fact  must  be  founded  in  such  truth 
if  my  experience  has  any  sense,  but  which,  like  my  ideas 
of  color  and  of  warmth,  are  simply  expressions  of  how  the 
world's  order  must  appear  to  me,  and  to  anybody  consti- 
tuted like  rne.  Above  all,  is  this  plain  about  space.  The 
real  things,  I  say,  outside  of  me,  fill  space,  and  move  about 
in  it.  But  what  do  I  mean  by  space  ?  Only  a  vast  sys- 
tem of  ideas  which  experience  and  my  own  mind  force 
upon  me.  Doubtless  these  ideas  have  a  validity.  They 
'have  this  validity,  that  I,  at  all  events,  when  I  look  upon 
the  world,  am  bound  to  see  it  in  space,  as  much  bound  as 
the  king  in  Hamlet  was,  when  he  looked  within,  to  see 
himself  as  guilty  and  unrepentant.  But  just  as  his  guilt 
was  an  idea,  —  a  crushing,  an  irresistible,  an  overwhelm- 
ing idea,  —  but  still  just  an  idea,  so,  too,  the  space  in  which 
I  place  my  world  is  one  great  formal  idea  of  mine.  That 
is  just  why  I  can  describe  it  to  other  people.  "  It  has 
three  dimensions,"  I  say,  "  length,  breadth,  depth."  I 
describe  each.  I  form,  I  convey,  I  construct,  an  idea  of 
it  through  them.  I  know  space,  as  an  idea,  very  well. 
I  can  compute  all  sorts  of  unseen  truths  about  the  rela- 
tions of  its  parts.  I  am  sure  that  yoii,  too,  share  this 
idea.  But,  then,  for  all  of  us  alike  it  is  just  an  idea  ;  and 
when  we  put  our  world  into  space,  and  call  it  real  there, 
we  simply  think  one  idea  into  another  idea,  not  volun- 
tarily, to  be  sure,  but  inevitably,  and  yet  without  leaving 
the  realm  of  ideas. 

Thus,  all  the  reality  that  we  attribute  to  our  world,  in 
so  far  as  we  know  and  can  tell  what  we  mean  thereby, 


REALITY  AND  IDEALISM.  359 

Becomes  ideal.  There  is,  in  fact,  a  certain  system  of  ideas, 
f dreed  upon  us  by  experience,  which  we  have  to  use  as 
the  guide  of  our  conduct.  This  system  of  ideas  we  can't 
change  by  our  wish ;  it  is  for  us  as  overwhelming  a  fact 
as  guilt,  or  as  the  bearing  of  our  fellows  towards  us,  but 
we  know  it  only  as  such  a  system  of  ideas.  And  we  call 
it  the  world  of  matter.  John  Stuart  Mill  very  well  ex- 
pressed the  puzzle  of  the  whole  thing,  as  we  have  now 
reached  the  statement  of  this  puzzle,  when  he  called  mat- 
ter a  mass  of  "  permanent  possibilities  of  experience  "  for 
each  of  us.  Mill's  definition  has  its  faults,  but  it  is  a 
very  fair  beginning.  You  know  matter  as  something  that 
either  now  gives  you  this  idea  or  experience,  or  that  would  / 
give  you  some  other  idea  or  experience  under  other  cir-i 
cumstances.  A  fire,  while  it  burns,  is  for  you  a  perma-1 
nent  possibility  of  either  getting  the  idea  of  an  agreeable 
warmth,  or  of  getting  the  idea  of  a  bad  burn,  and  you 
treat  it  accordingly.  A  precipice  amongst  mountains  is 
a  permanent  possibility  of  your  experiencing  a  fall,  or  of 
your  getting  a  feeling  of  the  exciting  or  of  the  sublime  in 
mountain  scenery.  You  have  no  experience  just  now  of 
the  tropics  or  of  the  poles,  but  both  tropical  and  polar 
climates  exist  in  your  world  as  permanent  possibilities  of 
experience.  When  you  call  the  sun  92,000,000  miles 
away,  you  mean  that  between  you  and  the  sun  (that  is, 
between  your  present  experience  and  the  possible  experi- 
ence of  the  sun's  surface)  there  would  inevitably  lie  the 
actually  inaccessible,  but  still  numerically  conceivable 
series  of  experiences  of  distance  expressed  by  the  number 
of  miles  in  question.  In  short,  your  whole  attitude  to- 
wards the  real  world  may  be  summed  up  by  saying :  "  I 
have  experiences  now  which  I  seem  bound  to  have,  expe- 
riences of  color,  sound,  and  all  the  rest  of  my  present 
ideas ;  and  I  am  also  bound  by  experience  to  believe  that 
in  case  I  did  certain  things  (for  instance,  touched  the 
wall,  traveled  to  the  tropics,  visited  Europe,  studied 


560  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

physics),  I  then  should  get,  in  a  determinate  order,  de- 
pendent wholly  upon  what  I  had  done,  certain  other  expe- 
riences (for  instance,  experiences  of  the  wall's  solidity,  or 
of  a  tropical  climate,  or  of  the  scenes  of  an  European  tour, 
or  of  the  facts  of  physics)."  Andthig  acceptance  of 


actual  experience,  this  belief  in  possible  experience,  con- 
stitutes all  that  you  mean  by  your  faith  in  the  outer 
world. 

But,  you  say,  Is  not,  then,  all  this  faith  of  ours  after  all 
well  founded  ?  Is  n't  there  really  something  yonder  that 
corresponds  in  fact  to  this  series  of  experiences  in  us? 
Yes,  indeed,  there  no  doubt  is.  But  what  if  this,  which 
so  shall  correspond  without  us  to  the  ideas  within  us,  what 
if  this  hard  and  fast  reality  should  itself  be  a  system  of 
ideas,  outside  of  our  minds  but  not  outside  of  every  mind? 
As  the  maiden's  disdain  is  outside  the  rejected  lover's 
mind,  unchangeable  so  far  for  him,  but  not  on  that  ac- 
count the  less  ideal,  not  the  less  a  fact  in  a  mind,  as,  to 
take  afresh  a  former  fashion  of  illustration,  the  price  of  a 
security  or  the  objective  existence  of  this  lecture  is  an 
ideal  fact,  but  real  and  external  for  the  individual  person, 
—  even  so  why  might  not  this  world  beyond  us,  this  "per- 
manent possibility  of  experience,"  be  in  essence  itself  a 
system  of  ideal  experiences  of  some  standard  thought  of 
which  ours  is  only  the  copy  ?  Nay,  must  it  not  be  such  a 
system  in  case  it  has  any  reality  at  all  ?  For,  after  allv 
is  n't  this  precisely  what  our  analysis  brings  us  to  ?  No- 
thing whatever  can  I  say  about  my  world  yonder  that  I 
do  not  express  in  terms  of  mind.  What  things  are,  ex- 
tended, moving,  colored,  tuneful,  majestic,  beautiful,  holy, 
what  they  are  in  any  aspect  of  their  nature,  mathematical, 
logical,  physical,  sensuously  pleasing,  spiritually  valuable, 
all  this  must  mean  for  me  only  something  that  I  have  to 
express  in  the  fashion  of  ideas.  The  more  I  am  to  know 
my  world,  the  more  of  a  mind  I  must  have  for  the  pur- 
pose. The  closer  I  come  to  the  truth  about  the  things, 


REALITY   AND   IDEALISM.  3 


the  more  ideas  I  get.  Is  n't  it  plain,  then,  that  if  my 
world  yonder  is  anything  knowable  at  all,  i£/inust  be  in 
and  for  itself  essentially  a  mental  world  ?  Are  my  ideas 
to  resemble  in  "any  way  the~world  ?  Is  the  truth  of  my 
thought  to  consist  in  its  agreement  with  reality?  And 
am  I  thus  capable,  as  common  sense  supposes,  of  conform- 
ing my  ideas  to  things  ?  Then  reflect.  What  can,  after 
all,  so  well  agree  with  an  idea  as  another  idea  ?  To  what 
can  things  that  go  on  in  my  mind  conform  unless  it  be  to 
another  mind  ?  If  the  more  my  mind  grows  in  mental 
clearness,  the  nearer  it  gets  to  the  nature  of  reality,  then 
surely  the  reality  that  my  mind  thus  resembles  must  be  in 
itself  mental. 

After  all,  then,  would  it  deprive  the  world  here  about 
me  of  reality,  nay,  would  it  not  rather  save  and  assure 
the  reality  and  the  knowableness  of  my  world  of  experi- 
ence, if  I  said  that  this  world,  as  it  exists  outside  of  my 
mind,  and  of  any  other  human  minds,  exists  in  and  for  a 
standard,  an  universal  mind,  whose  system  of  ideas  sim- 
ply constitutes  the  world  ?  Even  if  I  fail  to  prove  that 
there  is  such  a  mind,  do  I  not  at  least  thus  make  plausi- 
ble that,  as  I  said,  our  world  of  common  sense  has  no  fact 
in  it  which  we  cannot  interpret  in  terms  of  ideas,  so  that 
this  world  is  throughout  such  stuff  as  ideas  are  made  of  ? 
To  say  this,  as  you  see,  in  no  wise  deprives  our  world  of 
its  due  share  of  reality.  If  the  standard  mind  knows 
now  that  its  ideal  fire  has  the  quality  of  burning  those 
who  touch  it,  and  if  I  in  my  fmitude  am  bound  to  con- 
form in  my  experiences  to  the  thoughts  of  this  standard 
mind,  then  in  case  I  touch  that  fire  I  shall  surely  get  the 
idea  of  a  burn.  The  standard  mind  will  be  at  least  as 
hard  and  fast  and  real  in  its  ideal  consistency  as  is  the 
maiden  in  her  disdain  for  the  rejected  lover ;  and  I,  in 
presence  of  the  ideal  stars  and  the  oceans,  will  see  the  gen- 
uine realities  of  fate  as  certainly  as  the  lover  hears  his 
fate  in  the  voice  that  expresses  her  wilL 


862  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

I  need  not  now  proceed  further  with  an  analysis  that 
will  be  more  or  less  familiar  to  many  of  you,  especially 
after  our  foregoing  historical  lectures.  What  I  have  de- 
sired thus  far  is  merely  to  give  each  of  you,  as  it  were, 
the  sensation  of  being  an  idealist  in  this  first  and  purely 
analytical  sense  of  the  word  idealism.  The  sum  and  sub- 
stance of  it  all  is,  you  see,  this :  you  know  your  world  in 
fact  as  a  system  of  ideas  about  things,  such  that  from 
moment  to  moment  you  find  this  system  forced  upon  you 
by  experience.  Even  matter  you  know  just  as  a  mass  of 
coherent  ideas  that  you  cannot  help  having.  Space  and 
time,  as  you  think  them,  are  surely  ideas  of  yours.  Now, 
what  more  natural  than  to  say  that  if  this  be  so,  the  real 
world  beyond  you  must  in  itself  be  a  system  of  some- 
body's ideas  ?  If  it  is,  then  you  can  comprehend  what  its 
existence  means.  If  it  is  n't,  then  since  all  you  can  know 
of  it  is  ideal,  the  real  world  must  be  utterly  unknowable, 
a  bare  x.  JMinds  I  can  understand,  because  I  myself  am 
a  mind.  An  existence  that  has  no  mental  attribute  is 
wholly  opaque  to  me.  So  far,  however,  from  such  a  world 
of  ideas,  existent  beyond  me  in  another  mind,  seeming  to 
coherent  thought  essentially  rmreal,  ideas  and  minds  and 
their  ways,  are,  on  the  contrary,  the  hardest  and  stubborn- 
est  facts  that  we  can  name.  If  the  external  world  is  in  it- 
self mental,  then,  be  this  reality  a  standard  and  universal 
thought,  or  a  mass  of  little  atomic  minds  constituting  the 
various  particles  of  matter,  in  any  case  one  can  compre- 
hend what  it  is,  and  will  have  at  the  same  time  to  submit 
to  its  stubborn  authority  as  the  lover  accepts  the  real- 
ity of  the  maiden's  moods.  If  the  world  is  n't  such  an 
ideal  thing,  then  indeed  all  our  science,  which  is  through 
and  through  concerned  with  our  mental  interpretations  of 
things,  can  neither  have  objective  validity,  nor  make  satis- 
factory progress  towards  truth.  For  as  science  is  con. 
cerned  with  ideas,  the  world  beyond  all  ideas  is  a  bare  x. 


REALITY   AND  IDEALISM. 
III. 

But  with  this  bare  a;,  you  will  say,  this  analytical  ideal 
ism  after  all  leaves  ine,  as  with  something  that,  spite  of  all 
my  analyses  and  interpretations,  may  after  all  be  there 
beyond  me  as  the  real  world,  which  my  ideas  are  vainly 
striving  to  reach,  but  which  eternally  flees  before  me.  So 
far,  you  will  say,  what  idealism  teaches  is  that  the  real 
world  can  only  be  interpreted  by  treating  it  as  if  it  were 
somebody's  thought.  So  regarded,  the  idealism  of  Berke- 
ley and  of  other  such  thinkers  is  very  suggestive ;  yet  it 
does  n't  tell  us  what  the  true  world  is,  but  only  that  so 
much  of  the  true  world  as  we  ever  get  into  our  compre- 
hension has  to  be  conceived  in  ideal  terms.  Perhaps, 
however,  whilst  neither  beauty,  nor  majesty,  nor  odor,  nor 
warmth,  nor  tone,  nor  color,  nor  form,  nor  motion,  nor 
space,  nor  time  (all  these  being  but  ideas  of  ours),  can  be 
said  to  belong  to  the  extra-mental  world,  —  perhaps,  after 
all,  there  does  exist  there  yonder  an  extra-mental  world, 
which  has  nothing  to  do,  except  by  accident,  with  any 
mind,  and  which  is  through  and  through  just  extra-mental, 
something  unknowable,  inscrutable,  the  basis  of  experi- 
ence, the  source  of  ideas,  but  itself  never  experienced  as 
it  is  in  itself,  never  adequately  represented  by  any  idea 
in  us.  Perhaps  it  is  there.  Yes,  you  will  say,  must  it 
not  be  there  ?  Must  not  one  accept  our  limitations  once 
for  all,  and  say,  "  What  reality  is,  we  can  never  hope  to 
make  clear  to  ourselves.  That  which  has  been  made  clear 
becomes  an  idea  in  us.  But  always  there  is  the  beyond, 
the  mystery,  the  inscrutable,  the  real,  the  x.  To  be  sure, 
perhaps  we  can't  even  know  so  much  as  that  this  x  after 
all  does  exist.  But  then. we  feel  bound  to  regard  it  as 
existent ;  or  even  if  we  doubt  or  deny  it,  may  it  not  be 
there  all  the  same  ?  "  In  such  doubt  and  darkness,  then, 
this  first  form  of  idealism  closes.  If  that  were  all  ther& 
were  to  say,  I  should  indeed  have  led  you  a  long  road  b» 


304  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

vain.  Analyzing  what  the  known  world  is  for  you,  in 
case  there  is  haply  any  world  known  to  you  at  all,  —  this 
surely  is  n't  proving  that  there  is  any  real  world,  or  that 
the  real  world  can  be  known.  Are  we  not  just  where  we 
started  ? 

No ;  there  lies  now  just  ahead  of  us  the  goal  of  a  syn- 
thetic idealistic  conception,  which  will  not  be  content  with 
this  mere  analysis  of  the  colors  and  forms  of  things,  and 
with  the  mere  discovery  that  all  these  are  for  us  nothing 
but  ideas.  In  this  second  aspect,  idealism  grows  bolder, 
and  fears  not  the  profoundest  doubt  that  may  have  entered 
your  mind  as  to  whether  there  is  any  world  at  all,  or  as 
to  whether  it  is  in  any  fashion  knowable.  State  in  full 
the  deepest  problem,  the  hardest  question  about  the  world 
that  your  thought  ever  conceived.  In  this  new  form  ideal- 
ism offers  you  a  suggestion  that  indeed  will  not  wholly 
answer  nor  do  away  with  every  such  problem,  but  that 
certainly  will  set  the  meaning  of  it  in  a  new  light.  What 
this  new  light  is,  I  must  in  conclusion  seek  to  illustrate. 

Note  the  point  we  have  reached.  Either,  as  you  see, 
your  real  world  yonder  is  through  and  through  a  world  of 
ideas,  an  outer  mind  that  you  are  more  or  less  compre- 
hending through  your  experience,  or  else,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  real  and  outer  it  is  unknowable,  an  inscrutable  a?,  an 
absolute  mystery.  The  dilemma  is  perfect.  There  is  no 
third  alternative.  Either  a  mind  yonder,  or  else  the  un- 
knowable ;  that  is  your  choice.  Philosophy  loves  such 
dilemmas,  wherein  all  the  mightiest  interests  of  the  spirit, 
all  the  deepest  longings  of  human  passion,  are  at  stake, 
waiting  as  for  the  fall  of  a  die.  Philosophy  loves  such 
situations,  I  say,  and  loves,  too,  to  keep  its  scrutiny  as 
cool  in  the  midst  of  them  as  if  it  were  watching  a  game 
of  chess,  instead  of  the  great  world-game.  Well,  try  the 
darker  choice  that  the  dilemma  gives  you.  The  world 
yonder  shall  be  an  x,  an  unknowable  something,  outer, 
problematic,  foreign,  opaque.  And  you,  —  you  shall  look 


REALITY  AND  IDEALISM.  365 

opon  it  and  believe  in  it.  Yes,  you  shall  for  argument's 
sake  first  put  on  an  air  of  resigned  confidence,  and  say, 
"  I  do  not  only  fancy  it  to  be  an  extra-mental  and  un- 
knowable something  there,  an  impenetrable  cc,  but  I  know 
it  to  be  such.  I  can't  help  it.  I  did  n't  make  it  unknow- 
able. I  regret  the  fact.  But  there  it  is.  I  have  to  ad- 
mit its  existence.  But  I  know  that  I  shall  never  solve 
the  problem  of  its  nature."  Ah,  its  nature  is  a  problem^ 
then.  But  what  do  you  mean  by  this  "problem"? 
Problems  are,  after  a  fashion,  rather  familiar  things,  — 
that  is,  in  the  world  of  ideas.  There  are  problems  soluble 
and  problems  insoluble  in  that  world  of  ideas.  It  is  a 
soluble  problem  if  one  asks  what  whole  number  is  the 
square  root  of  64.  The  answer  is  8.  It  is  an  insoluble 
problem  if  one  asks  me  to  find  what  whole  number  is  the 
square  root  of  65.  There  is,  namely,  no  such  whole  num- 
ber. If  one  asks  me  to  name  the  length  of  a  straight 
line  that  shall  be  equal  to  the  circumference  of  a  circle  of 
a  known  radius,  that  again,  in  the  world  of  ideas,  is  an 
insoluble  problem,  because,  as  can  be  proved,  the  circum- 
ference of  a  circle  is  a  length  that  cannot  possibly  be  ex- 
actly expressed  in  terms  of  any  statable  number  when 
the  radius  is  of  a  stated  length.  So  in  the  world  of  ideas, 
problems  are  definite  questions  which  can  be  asked  in  know- 
able  terms.  Fair  questions  of  this  sort  either  may  be 
fairly  answered  in  our  present  state  of  knowledge,  or  else 
they  could  be  answered  if  we  knew  a  little  or  a  good  deal 
more,  or  finally  they  could  not  possibly  be  answered.  But 
in  the  latter  case,  if  they  could  not  possibly  be  answered, 
they  always  must  resemble  the  problem  how  to  square  the 
circle.  They  then  always  turn  out,  namely,  to  be  absurdly 
stated  questions,  and  it  is  their  absurdity  that  makes  these 
problems  absolutely  insoluble.  Any  fair  question  could 
be  answered  by  one  who  knew  enough.  No  fair  question 
has  an  unknowable  answer.  But  now,  if  your  unknow- 
able world  out  there  is  a  thing  of  wholly,  of  absolutely 


366  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

problematic  and  inscrutable  nature,  is  it  so  because  yon 
don't  yet  know  enough  about  it,  or  because  in  its  very 
nature  and  essence  it  is  an  absurd  thing,  an  x  that 
would  answer  a  question,  which  actually  it  is  nonsense  to 
ask?  Surely  one  must  choose  the  former  alternative. 
The  real  world  may  be  unknown ;  it  can't  be  essentially 
unknowable. 

This  subtlety  is  wearisome  enough,  I  know,  just  here, 
but  I  shall  not  dwell  long  upon  it.  Plainly  if  the  unknow- 
able world  out  there  is  through  and  through  in  its  nature 
a  really  inscrutable  problem,  this  must  mean  that  in 
nature  it  resembles  such  problems  as,  What  is  the  whole 
number  that  is  the  square  root  of  65  ?  Or,  What  two 
adjacent  hills  are  there  that  have  no  valley  between  them? 
For  in  the  world  of  thought  such  are  the  only  insoluble 
problems.  All  others  either  may  now  be  solved,  or 
would  be  solved  if  we  knew  more  than  we  now  do.  But, 
once  more,  if  this  unknowable  is  only  just  the  real  world 
as  now  unknown  to  us,  but  capable  some  time  of  becoming 
known,  then  remember  that,  as  we  have  just  seen,  only  a 
mind  can  ever  become  an  object  known  to  a  mind.  If  I 
know  you  as  external  to  me,  it  is  only  because  you  are 
minds.  If  I  can  come  to  know  any  truth,  it  is  only  in 
so  far  as  this  truth  is  essentially  mental,  is  an  idea,  is  2 
thought,  that  I  can  ever  come  to  know  it.  Hence,  if  that, 
so-called  unknowable,  that  unknown  outer  world  there, 
ever  could,  by  any  device,  come  within  our  ken,  then  it  is 
already  an  ideal  world.  For  just  that  is  what  our  whole 
idealistic  analysis  has  been  proving.  Only  ideas  are 
knowable.  And  nothing  absolutely  unknowable  can  exist. 
For  the  absolutely  unknowable,  the  x  pure  and  simple, 
the  Kantian  thing  in  itself,  simply  cannot  be  admitted. 
The  notion  of  it  is  nonsense.  The  assertion  of  it  is  a  con- 
tradiction. Round-squares,  and  sugar  salt-lumps,  and 
Snarks,  and  Boojums,  and  Jabberwocks,  and  Abracada- 
bras ;  such,  I  insist,  are  the  only  unknowables  there 


REALITY   AND  IDEALISM.  367 

The  unknown,  that  which  our  human  and  finite  selfhood 
has  n't  grasped,  exists  spread  out  before  us  in  a  bound- 
less world  of  truth ;  but  the  unknowable  is  essentially, 
confessedly,  ipso  facto  a  fiction. 

The  nerve  of  our  whole  argument  in  the  foregoing  is 
now  pretty  fairly  exposed.  We  have  seen  that  the  outer 
truth  must  be,  if  anything,  a  "  possibility  of  experience." 
But  we  may  now  see  that  a  bare  "  possibility  "  as  such,  is, 
like  the  unknowable,  something  meaningless.  That 
which,  whenever  I  come  to  know  it,  turns  out  to  be 
through  and  through  an  idea,  an  experience,  must  be  in 
itself,  before  I  know  it,  either  somebody's  idea,  somebody's 
experience,  or  it  must  be  nothing.  What  is  a  "  possibil- 
ity "  of  experience  that  is  outside  of  me,  and  that  is  still 
nothing  for  any  one  one  else  than  myself?  Is  n't  it  a  bare 
je,  a  nonsense  phrase  ?  Is  n't  it  like  an  unseen  color,  an 
untasted  taste,  an  unfelt  feeling?  In  proving  that  the 
world  is  one  of  "  possible  "  experience,  we  have  proved 
that  in  so  far  as  it  is  real  it  is  one  of  actual  experience. 

Once  more,  then,  to  sum  up  here,  if,  however  vast  the 
world  of  the  unknown,  only  the  essentially  knowable  can 
exist,  and  if  everything  knowable  is  an  idea,  a  mental 
somewhat,  the  content  of  some  mind,  then  once  for  all  we 
are  the  world  of  ideas.  Your  deepest  doubt  proves  this. 
Only  the  nonsense  of  that  inscrutable  a;,  of  that  Abraca- 
dabra, of  that  Snark,  the  Unknowable  of  whose  essence 
you  make  your  real  world,  prevents  you  from  seeing  this. 

To  return,  however,  to  our  dilemma.  Either  ideal- 
ism, we  said,  or  the  unknowable.  What  we  have  now 
said  is  that  the  absolutely  unknowable  is  essentially  an 
absurdity,  a  non-existent.  For  any  fair  and  statable 
problem  admits  of  an  answer.  If  the  world  exists  yonder, 
its  essence  is  then  already  capable  of  being  known  by 
some  mind.  If  capable  of  being  known  by  a  mind,  this 
essence  is  then  already  essentially  ideal  and  mental.  A 
mind  that  knew  the  real  world  would,  for  instance,  find  it 


368  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

a  something  possessing  qualities.  But  qualities  are  ideal 
existences,  just  as  much  as  are  the  particular  qualities 
called  odors  or  tones  or  colors.  A  mind  knowing  the  real 
world  would  again  find  in  it  relations,  such  as  equality 
and  inequality,  attraction  and  repulsion,  likeness  and 
unlikeness.  But  such  relations  have  no  meaning  except 
as  objects  of  a  mind.  In  brief,  then,  the  world  as  known 
would  be  found  to  be  a  world  that  had  all  the  while  been 
ideal  and  mental,  even  before  it  became  known  to  the 
particular  mind  that  we  are  to  conceive  as  coming  into 
connection  with  it.  Thus,  then,  we  are  driven  to  the  sec- 
ond alternative.  The  real  world  must  be  a  mind,  or  else 
a  group  of  minds. 

IV. 

But  with  this  result  we  come  in  presence  of  a  final 
problem.  All  this,  you  say,  depends  upon  my  assurance 
that  there  is  after  all  a  real  and  therefore  an  essentially 
knowable  and  rational  world  yonder.  Such  a  world  would 
have  to  be  in  essence  a  mind,  or  a  world  of  minds.  But 
after  all,  how  does  one  ever  escape  from  the  prison  of  the 
inner  life  ?  Am  I  not  in  all  this  merely  wandering  amidst 
the  realm  of  my  own  ideas  ?  My  world,  of  course,  is  n't 
and  can't  be  a  mere  x,  an  essentially  unknowable  thing, 
just  because  it  is  my  world,  and  I  have  an  idea  of  it.  But 
then  does  not  this  mean  that  my  world  is,  after  all,  for- 
ever just  my  world,  so  that  I  never  get  to  any  truth  beyond 
myself?  Is  n't  this  result  very  disheartening?  My  world 
is  thus  a  world  of  ideas,  but  alas !  how  do  I  then  ever 
reach  those  ideas  of  the  minds  beyond  me  ? 

The  answer  is  a  simple,  but  in  one  sense  a  very  prob- 
lematic one.  You,  in  one  sense,  namely,  never  do  or  can 
get  beyond  your  own  ideas,  nor  ought  you  to  wish  to  do  so, 
because  in  truth  all  those  other  minds  that  constitute  your 
outer  and  real  world  are  in  essence  one  with  your  own  self. 
This  whole  world  of  ideas  is  essentially  one  world,  and  so 
it  is  essentially  the  world  of  one  self  and  That  art  Thou. 


REALITY   AND  IDEALISM.  369 

The  truth  and  meaning  of  this  deepest  proposition  of 
all  idealism  is  now  not  at  all  remote  from  us.  The  con- 
siderations, however,  upon  which  it  depends  are  of  the 
dryest  possible  sort,  as  commonplace  as  they  are  deep. 

Whatever  objects  you  may  think  about,  whether  they 
are  objects  directly  known  to  you,  or  objects  infinitely  far 
removed,  objects  in  the  distant  stars,  or  objects  remote  in 
time,  or  objects  near  and  present,  —  such  objects,  then,  as 
a  number  with  fifty  places  of  digits  in  it,  or  the  moun- 
tains on  the  other  side  of  the  moon,  or  the  day  of  your 
death,  or  the  character  of  Cromwell,  or  the  law  of  gravi- 
tation, or  a  name  that  you  are  just  now  trying  to  think  of 
and  have  forgotten,  or  the  meaning  of  some  mood  or  feel- 
ing or  idea  now  in  your  mind,  —  all  such  objects,  I  insist, 
stand  in  a  certain  constant  and  curious  relation  to  your 
mind  whenever  you  are  thinking  about  them,  —  a*  relation 
that  we  often  miss  because  it  is  so  familiar.  What  is 
this  relation  ?  Such  an  object,  while  you  think  about  it, 
need  n't  be,  as  popular  thought  often  supposes  it  to  be, 
the  cause  of  your  thoughts  concerning  it.  Thus,  when 
you  think  about  Cromwell's  character,  Cromwell's  charac- 
ter is  n't  just  now  causing  any  ideas  in  you,  —  is  n't,  so  to 
speak,  doing  anything  to  you.  Cromwell  is  dead,  and  af- 
ter, life's  fitful  fever  his  character  is  a  very  inactive  thing. 
Not  as  the  cause,  but  as  the  object  of  your  thought  is  Crom- 
well present  to  you.  Even  so,  if  you  choose  now  to  think 
of  the  moment  of  your  death,  that  moment  is  somewhere 
off  there  in  the  future,  and  you  can  make  it  your  object, 
but  it  is  n't  now  an  active  cause  of  your  ideas.  The  mo- 
ment of  your  death  has  no  present  physical  existence  at 
all,  and  just  now  causes  nothing.  So,  too,  with  the  moun- 
tains on  the  other  side  of  the  moon.  When  you  make 
them  the  object  of  your  thought,  they  remain  indifferent 
to  you.  They  do  not  affect  you.  You  never  saw  them. 
But  all  the  same  you  can  think  about  them. 

Yet  this  thinking  about  things  is,  after  all,  a  very  curi? 


370  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

ous  relation  in  which  to  stand  to  things.  In  order  to 
think  about  a  thing,  it  is  not  enough  that  I  should  have 
an  idea  in  me  that  merely  resembles  that  thing.  This 
last  is  a  very  important  observation.  I  repeat,  it  is  not 
enough  that  I  should  merely  have  an  idea  in  me  that  re- 
sembles the  thing  whereof  I  think.  I  have,  for  instance, 
in  me  the  idea  of  a  pain.  Another  man  has  a  pain  just  like 
mine.  Say  we  both  have  toothache ;  or  have  both  burned 
our  finger-tips  in  the  same  way.  Now  my  idea  of  pain  is 
just  like  the  pain  in  him,  but  I  am  not  on  that  account 
necessarily  thinking  about  his  pain,  merely  because  what 
I  am  thinking  about,  namely  my  own  pain,  resembles  his 
pain.  No ;  to  think  about  an  object  you  must  not  merely 
have  an  idea  that  resembles  the  object,  but  you  must  mean, 
to  have  your  idea  resemble  that  object.  Stated  in  other 
form,  to  think  of  an  object  you  must  consciously  aim  at 
that  object,  you  must  pick  out  that  object,  you  must  al- 
ready in  some  measure  possess  that  object  enough,  namely, 
to  identify  it  as  what  you  mean.  But  how  can  you  mean, 
how  can  you  aim  at,  how  can  you  possess,  how  can  you 
pick  out,  how  can  you  identify  what  is  not  already  pres- 
ent in  essence  to  your  own  hidden  self  ?  Here  is  surely  a 
deep  question.  When  you  aim  at  yonder  object,  be  it  the 
mountains  in  the  moon  or  the  day  of  your  death,  you 
really  say,  "  I,  as  my  real  self,  as  my  larger  self,  as  my 
complete  consciousness,  already  in  deepest  truth  possess 
that  object,  have  it,  own  it,  identify  it.  And  that,  and 
that  alone,  makes  it  possible  for  me  in  my  transient,  my  in- 
dividual, my  momentary  personality,  to  mean  yonder  ob- 
ject, to  inquire  about  it,  to  be  partly  aware  of  it  and  partly 
ignorant  of  it."  You  can't  mean  what  is  utterly  foreign 
to  you.  You  mean  an  object,  you  assert  about  it,  you  talk 
about  it,  yes,  you  doubt  or  wonder  about  it,  you  admit 
your  private  and  individual  ignorance  about  it,  only  in  so 
far  as  your  larger  self,  your  deeper  personality,  your  to- 
tal of  normal  consciousness  already  has  that  object.  Youi 


REALITY   AND  IDEALISM.  371 

momentary  and  private  wonder,  ignorance,  inquiry,  or 
assertion,  about  the  object,  implies,  asserts,  presupposes, 
that  your  total  self  is  in  full  and  immediate  possession  of 
the  object.  This,  in  fact,  is  the  very  nature  of  that  curi- 
ous relation  of  a  thought  to  an  object  which  we  are  now 
considering.  The  self  that  is  doubting  or  asserting,  or 
that  is  even  feeling  its  private  ignorance  about  an  object, 
and  that  still,  even  in  consequence  of  all  this,  is  meaning, 
is  aiming  at  such  object,  is  in  essence  identical  with  the 
self  for  which  this  object  exists  in  its  complete  and  con- 
sciously known  truth. 

So  paradoxical  seems  this  final  assertion  of  idealism 
that  I  cannot  hope  in  one  moment  to  make  it  very  plain  to 
you.  It  is  a  difficult  topic,  about  which  I  have  elsewhere 
printed  a  very  lengthy  research,1  wherewith  I  cannot  here 
trouble  you.  But  what  I  intend  by  thus  saying  that  the 
self  which  thinks  about  an  object,  which  really,  even  in 
the  midst  of  the  blindest  ignorance  and  doubt  concerning 
its  object  still  means  the  object, — that  this  self  is  identi- 
cal with  the  deeper  self  which  possesses  and  truly  knows 
the  object,  —  what  I  intend  hereby  I  can  best  illustrate 
by  simple  cases  taken  from  your  own  experience.  You 
are  in  doubt,  say,  about  a  name  that  you  have  forgotten, 
or  about  a  thought  that  you  just  had,  but  that  has  now 
escaped  you.  As  you  hunt  for  the  name  or  the  lost  idea, 
you  are  all  the  while  sure  that  you  mean  just  one  particu- 
lar name  or  idea  and  no  other.  But  you  don't  yet  know 
what  name  or  idea  this  is.  You  try,  and  reject  name  after 
name.  You  query,  "  Was  this  what  I  was  thinking  of, 
or  this  ?  "  But  after  searching  you  erelong  find  the  name 
or  the  idea,  and  now  at  once  you  recognize  it.  "Oh, 
that,"  you  say,  "  was  what  I  meant  all  along,  only  —  I 
did  n't  know  what  I  meant."  Did  not  know  ?  Yes,  in  one 
sense  you  knew  all  the  while,  —  that  is,  your  deeper  self, 

1  See  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy  (Boston,  1885),  ch.  xi, 
»  The  Possibility  of  Error,"  pp.  384-435. 


372  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

your  true  consciousness  knew.  It  was  your  momentary 
self  that  did  not  know.  But  when  you  found  the  long- 
sought  name,  recalled  the  lost  idea,  you  recognized  it  at 
once,  because  it  was  all  the  while  your  own,  because  you, 
the  true  and  larger  self,  who  owned  the  name  or  the  idea 
and  were  aware  of  what  it  was,  now  were  seen  to  include 
the  smaller  and  momentary  self  that  sought  the  name  or 
tried  to  recall  the  thought.  Your  deeper  consciousness  of 
the  lost  idea  was  all  the  while  there.  In  fact,  did  you  not 
presuppose  this  when  you  sought  the  lost  idea  ?  How  can 
I  mean  a  name,  or  an  idea,  unless  I  in  truth  am  the  self 
who  knows  the  name,  who  possesses  the  idea  ?  In  hunting 
for  the  name  or  the  lost  idea,  I  am  hunting  for  my  own 
thought.  Well,  just  so  I  know  nothing  about  the  far-off 
stars  in  detail,  but  in  so  far  as  I  mean  the  far-off  stars  at 
all,  as  I  speak  of  them,  I  am  identical  with  that  remote 
and  deep  thought  of  my  own  that  already  knows  the  stars. 
When  I  study  the  stars,  I  am  trying  to  find  out  what  I 
really  mean  by  them.  To  be  sure,  only  experience  can 
tell  me,  but  that  is  because  only  experience  can  bring 
me  into  relation  with  my  larger  self.  The  escape  from 
the  prison  of  the  inner  self  is  simply  the  fact  that  the  in- 
ner self  is  through  and  through  an  appeal  to  a  larger  self. 
The  self  that  inquires,  either  inquires  without  meaning, 
or  if  it  has  a  meaning,  this  meaning  exists  in  and  for  the 
larger  self  that  knows. 

Here  is  a  suggestion  of  what  I  mean  by  Synthetic  Ideal- 
ism. No  truth,  I  repeat,  is  more  familiar.  That  I  am 
always  meaning  to  inquire  into  objects  beyond  me,  what 
clearer  fact  could  be  mentioned  ?  That  only  in  case  it  is 
already  I  who,  in  deeper  truth,  in  my  real  and  hidden 
thought,  know  the  lost  object  yonder,  the  object  whose  na- 
ture I  seek  to  comprehend,  that  only  in  this  case  I  can 
truly  mean  the  thing  yonder,  —  this,  as  we  must  assert,  is 
involved  in  the  very  idea  of  meaning.  That  is  the  logical 
analysis  of  it.  You  can  mean  what  your  deeper  self 


REALITY  AND   IDEALISM.  373 

knows  ;  you  cannot  mean  what  your  deeper  self  does  n't 
know.  To  be  sure,  the  complete  illustration  of  this  most 
critical  insight  of  idealism  belongs  elsewhere.  Few  see 
the  familiar.  Nothing  is  more  common  than  for  people 
to  think  that  they  mean  objects  that  have  nothing  to  do 
with  themselves.  Kant  it  was,  who,  despite  his  things  in 
themselves,  first  showed  us  that  nobody  really  means  an 
object,  really  knows  it,  or  doubts  it,  or  aims  at  it,  unless  he 
does  so  by  aiming  at  a  truth  that  is  present  to  his  own 
larger  self.  Except  for  the  unity  of  my  true  self,  taught 
Kant,  I  have  no  objects.  And  so  it  makes  no  difference 
whether  I  know  a  thing  or  am  in  doubt  about  it.  So 
long  as  I  really  mean  it,  that  is  enough.  The  self  that 
means  the  object  is  identical  with  the  larger  self  that 
possesses  the  object,  just  as  when  you  seek  the  lost  idea 
you  are  already  in  essence  with  the  self  that  possesses  the 
lost  idea. 

In  this  way  I  suggest  to  you  the  proof  which  a  rigid 
analysis  of  the  logic  of  our  most  commonplace  thought 
would  give  for  the  doctrine  that  in  the  world  there  is  but 
one  Self,  and  that  it  is  his  world  which  we  all  alike  are 
truly  meaning,  whether  we  talk  of  one  another  or  of 
Cromwell's  character  or  of  the  fixed  stars  or  of  the  far- 
off  aeons  of  the  future.  The  relation  of  my  thought  to 
its  object  has,  I  insist,  this  curious  character,  that  unless 
the  thought  and  its  object  are  parts  of  one  larger  thought, 
I  can't  even  be  meaning  that  object  yonder,  can't  even 
be  in  error  about  it,  can't  even  doubt  its  existence.  You, 
for  instance,  are  part  of  one  larger  self  with  me,  or  else 
I  can't  even  be  meaning  to  address  you  as  outer  beings. 
You  are  part  of  one  larger  self  along  with  the  most  mys- 
terious or  most  remote  fact  of  nature,  along  with  the 
moon,  and  all  the  hosts  of  heaven,  along  with  all  truth 
and  all  beauty.  Else  could  you  not  even  intend  to  speak 
of  such  objects  beyond  you.  For  whatever  you  speak  of 
you  will  find  that  your  world  is  meant  by  you  as  just 


874  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

your  world.  Talk  of  the  unknowable,  and  it  forthwith 
becomes  your  unknowable,  your  problem,  whose  solution, 
unless  the  problem  be  a  mere  nonsense  question,  your 
larger  self  must  own  and  be  aware  of.  The  deepest  prob- 
lem of  life  is,  "  What  is  this  deeper  self?  "  And  the  only 
answer  is,  It  is  the  self  that  knows  in  unity  all  truth. 
This,  I  insist,  is  no  hypothesis.  It  is  actually  the  pre- 
supposition of  your  deepest  doubt.  And  that  is  why 
I  say :  Everything-  finite  is  more  or  less  obscure,  dark, 
doubtful.  Only  the  Infinite  Self,  the  problem-solver,  the 
complete  thinker,  the  one  who  knows  what  we  mean  even 
when  we  are  most  confused  and  ignorant,  the  one  who  in- 
cludes us,  who  has  the  world  present  to  himself  in  unity, 
before  whom  all  past  and  future  truth,  all  distant  and 
dark  truth  is  clear  in  one  eternal  moment,  to  whom  far 
and  forgot  is  near,  who  thinks  the  whole  of  nature,  and 
in  whom  are  all  things,  the  Logos,  the  world-possessor,  — • 
only  his  existence,  I  say,  is  perfectly  sure. 

v. 

Yet  I  must  not  state  the  outcome  thus  confidently  with- 
out a  little  more  analysis  and  exemplification.  Let  me 
put  the  whole  matter  in  a  slightly  different  way.  When  a 
man  believes  that  he  knows  any  truth  about  a  fact  beyond 
his  present  and  momentary  thought,  what  is  the  position, 
with  reference  to  that  fact,  which  he  gives  himself  ?  We 
must  first  answer,  He  believes  that  one  who  really  knew 
his,  the  thinker's,  thought,  and  compared  it  with  the  fact 
yonder,  would  perceive  the  agreement  between  the  two. 
Is  this  all,  however,  that  the  believer  holds  to  be  true  o^ 
of  his  own  thought  ?  No,  not  so,  for  he  holds  not  only 
that  his  thought,  as  it  is,  agrees  with  some  fact  outside  his 
present  self  (as  my  thought,  for  instance,  of  my  toothache 
may  agree  with  the  fact  yonder  called  my  neighbor's 
toothache),  but  also  that  his  thought  agrees  with  tae 
fact  with  which  it  meant  to  agree.  To  mean  to  agree, 


REALITY   AND   IDEALISM.  375 

however,  with  a  specific  fact  beyond  my  present  self,  in- 
volves such  a  relation  to  that  fact  that  if  I  could  somehow 
some  directly  into  the  presence  of  the  fact  itself,  could 
somehow  absorb  it  into  my  present  consciousness,  I  should 
become  immediately  aware  of  it  as  the  fact  that  I  all 
along  had  meant.  Our  previous  examples  have  been  in- 
tended to  bring  clearly  before  us  this  curious  and  in  fact 
unique  character  of  the  relation  called  meaning  an  ob- 
ject of  our  thought.  To  return,  then,  to  our  supposed 
believer :  he  believes  that  he  knows  some  fact  beyond  his 
present  consciousness.  This  involves,  as  we  have  now 
seen,  the  assertion  that  he  believes  himself  to  stand  in 
such  an  actual  relation  to  the  fact  yonder  that  were  it  in, 
instead  of  out  of  his  present  consciousness,  he  would  rec- 
ognize it  both  as  the  object  meant  by  his  present  thought, 
and  also  as  in  agreement  therewith ;  and  it  is  all  this  which, 
as  he  believes,  an  immediate  observer  of  his  own  thought 
and  of  the  object  —  that  is,  an  observer  who  should  in- 
clude our  believer's  present  self,  and  the  fact  yonder,  and 
who  should  reflect  on  their  relations  —  would  find  as 
the  real  relation.  Observe,  however,  that  only  by  reflec- 
tion would  this  higher  observer  find  out  that  real  relation. 
Nothing  but  Reflective  Self -consciousness  could  discover 
it.  To  believe  that  you  know  anything  beyond  your  pre- 
sent and  momentary  self,  is,  therefore,  to  believe  that  you 
do  stand  in  such  a  relation  to  truth  as  only  a  larger  and 
reflectively  observant  self,  that  included  you  and  your 
object,  could  render  intelligible.  Or  once  more,  so  to 
believe  is  essentially  to  appeal  confidently  to  a  possible 
larger  self  for  approval.  But  now  to  say,  I  know  a  truth, 
and  yet  to  say,  This  larger  self  to  whom  I  appeal  is  ap- 
pealed to  only  as  to  a  possible  self,  that  need  n't  be  real, 
—  all  this  involves  just  the  absurdity  against  which  our 
whole  idealistic  analysis  has  been  directed  in  case  of  all 
the  sorts  of  fact  and  truth  in  the  world.  To  believe,  is  to 
say,  I  stand  in  a  real  relation  to  truth,  a  relation  which 


376  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

transcends  wholly  my  present  momentary  self ;  and  this 
real  relation  is  of  such  a  curious  nature  that  only  a  larger 
inclusive  self  which  consciously  reflected  upon  my  mean- 
ing and  consciously  possessed  the  object  that  I  mean, 
could  know  or  grasp  the  reality  of  the  relation.  If,  how- 
ever, this  relation  is  a  real  one,  it  must,  like  the  colors, 
the  sounds,  and  all  the  other  things  of  which  we  spoke  be- 
fore be  real  for  somebody.  Bare  possibilities  are  nothing. 
Really  possible  things  are  already  in  some  sense  real. 
If,  then,  my  relation  to  the  truth,  this  complex  relation  of 
meaning  an  object  and  conforming  to  it,  when  the  object, 
although  at  this  moment  meant  by  me,  is  not  now  present 
to  my  momentary  thought,  —  if  this  relation  is  genuine, 
and  yet  is  such  as  only  a  possible  larger  self  could  render 
intelligible,  then  my  possible  larger  self  must  be  real  in 
order  that  my  momentary  self  should  in  fact  possess  the 
truth  in  question.  Or,  in  briefest  form,  The  relation  of 
conforming  one's  thought  to  an  outer  object  meant  by 
this  thought  is  a  relation  which  only  a  Reflective  Larger 
Self  could  grasp  or  find  real.  If  the  relation  is  real,  the 
larger  self  is  real,  too. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  case  when  one  believes  that  one 
has  grasped  a  truth  beyond  the  moment.  But  now  for 
the  case  when  one  is  actually  in  error  about  some  object 
of  his  momentary  and  finite  thought.  Error  is  the  actual 
failure  to  agree,  not  with  any  fact  taken  at  random,  but 
with  just  the  fact  that  one  had  meant  to  agree  with. 
Under  what  circumstances,  then,  is  error  possible?  Only 
in  case  one's  real  thought,  by  virtue  of  its  meaning,  does 
transcend  his  own  momentary  and  in  so  far  ignorant  self. 
As  the  true  believer,  meaning  the  truth  that  he  believes, 
must  be  in  real  relation  thereto,  even  so  the  blunderer, 
really  meaning,  as  he  does,  the  fact  yonder,  in  order  that 
he  should  be  able  even  to  blunder  about  it,  must  be,  in  so 
far,  in  the  same  real  relation  to  truth  as  the  true  believer. 
His  error  lies  in  missing  that  conformity  with  the  meant 


REALITY   AND   IDEALISM.  377 

object  at  which  he  aimed.  None  the  less,  however,  did  he 
really  mean  and  really  aim  ;  and,  therefore,  is  he  in  error, 
because  his  real  and  larger  self  finds  him  to  be  so.  True 
thinking  and  false  thinking  alike  involve,  then,  the  same 
fundamental  conditions,  in  so  far  as  both  are  carried  on 
in  moments ;  and  in  so  far  as,  in  both  cases,  the  false 
moment  and  the  true  are  such  by  virtue  of  being  organic 
parts  of  a  larger,  critical,  reflective,  and  so  conscious 
self. 

To  sum  up  so  far :  Of  no  object  do  I  speak  either 
falsely  or  truly,  unless  I  mean  that  object.  Never  do  I 
mean  an  object,  unless  I  stand  in  such  relation  thereto 
that  were  the  object  in  this  conscious  moment,  and  imme- 
diately present  to  me,  I  should  myself  recognize  it  as 
completing  and  fulfilling  my  present  and  momentary 
meaning.  The  relation  of  meaning  an  object  is  thus  one 
that  only  conscious  Reflection  can  define,  or  observe,  or 
constitute.  No  merely  foreign  observer,  no  external  test, 
could  decide  upon  what  is  meant  at  any  moment.  There- 
fore, when  what  is  meant  is  outside  of  the  moment  which 
means,  only  a  Self  inclusive  of  the  moment  and  its  object 
could  complete,  and  so  confirm  or  refute,  the  opinion  that 
the  moment  contains.  Really  to  mean  an  object,  then, 
whether  in  case  of  true  opinion  or  in  case  of  false  opinion, 
involves  the  real  possibility  of  such  a  reflective  test  of 
one's  meaning  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  larger  self. 
But  to  say,  My  relation  to  the  object  is  such  that  a  reflec- 
tive larger  self,  and  only  such  a  reflective  and  inclusive 
self,  could  see  that  I  meant  the  object,  is  to  assert  a  fact, 
a  relation,  an  existent  truth  in  the  world,  that  either  is  a 
truth  for  nobody,  or  is  a  truth  for  an  actual  reflective 
self,  inclusive  of  the  moment,  and  critical  of  its  meaning. 
Our  whole  idealistic  analysis,  however,  from  the  begin- 
ning of  this  discussion,  has  been  to  the  effect  that  facts 
must  be  facts  for  somebody,  and  can't  be  facts  for  nobody, 
and  that  bare  possibilities  are  really  impossible.  Hence 


878  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

whoever  believes,  whether  truly  or  falsely,  about  objects 
beyond  the  moment  of  his  belief,  is  an  organic  part  of  a 
reflective  and  conscious  larger  self  that  has  those  objects 
immediately  present  to  itself,  and  has  them  in  organic 
relation  with  the  erring  or  truthful  momentary  self  that 
believes. 

Belief,  true  and  false,  having  been  examined,  the  case 
of  doubt  follows  at  once.  To  doubt  about  objects  beyond 
my  momentary  self  is  to  admit  the  "  possibility  of  error  " 
as  to  such  objects.  Error  would  involve  my  inclusion  in 
a  larger  self  that  has  directly  present  to  it  the  object 
meant  by  me  as  I  doubt.  Truth  would  involve  the  same 
inclusion.  The  inclusion  itself,  then,  is,  so  far,  no  object 
of  rational  doubt.  To  doubt  the  inclusion  would  be 
merely  to  doubt  whether  I  meant  anything  at  all  beyond 
the  moment,  and  not  to  doubt  as  to  my  particular  know- 
ledge about  the  nature  of  some  object  beyond,  when  once 
the  object  had  been  supposed  to  be  meant.  Doubt  pre- 
supposes then,  whenever  it  is  a  definite  doubt,  the  real 
possibility,  and  so,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  reality  of  the 
normal  self-consciousness  that  possesses  the  object  con- 
cerning which  one  doubts. 

But  if,  passing  to  the  extreme  of  skepticism,  and  stating 
one's  most  despairing  and  most  uncompromising  doubt, 
one  so  far  confines  himself  to  the  prison  of  the  inner 
as  to  doubt  whether  one  ever  does  mean  any  object 
beyond  the  moment  at  all,  there  comes  the  final  consider- 
ation that  in  doubting  one's  power  to  transcend  the  mo- 
ment, one  has  already  transcended  the  moment,  just  as  we 
found  in  following  Hegel's  analysis.1  To  say,  It  is  im- 
possible to  mean  any  object  beyond  this  moment  of  my 
thought,  and  the  moment  is  for  itself  "  the  measure  of  all 
things,"  is  at  all  events  to  give  a  meaning  to  the  words 
this  moment.  And  this  moment  means  something  only  in 
opposition  to  other  moments.  Yes,  even  in  saying  this 
1  See,  in  the  lecture  on  Hegel,  pp.  204-207. 


BEAUTY  AND  IDEALISM.  379 

moment,  I  have  already  left  this  moment,  and  am  mean- 
ing and  speaking  of  a  past  moment.  Moreover,  to  deny 
that  one  can  mean  an  object  "  beyond  the  moment "  is 
already  to  give  a  meaning  to  the  phrase  beyond  the  mo- 
ment, and  then  to  deny  that  anything  is  meant  to  fall 
within  the  scope  of  this  meaning.  In  every  case,  then, 
one  must  transcend  by  one's  meaning  the  moment  to 
which  one  is  confined  by  one's  finitude. 

Flee  where  we  will,  then,  the  net  of  the  larger  Self  en- 
snares us.  We  are  lost  and  imprisoned  in  the  thickets 
of  its  tangled  labyrinth.  The  moments  are  not  at  all  in 
themselves,  for  as  moments  they  have  no  meaning ;  they 
exist  only  in  relation  to  the  beyond.  The  larger  Self 
alone  is,  and  they  are  by  reason  of  it,  organic  parts  of  it. 
They  perish,  but  it  remains ;  they  have  truth  or  error 
only  in  its  overshadowing  presence. 

And  now,  as  to  the  unity  of  this  Self.  Can  there  be 
many  such  organic  selves,  mutually  separate  unities  of 
moments  and  of  the  objects  that  these  moments  mean? 
Nay,  were  there  many  such,  would  not  their  manifoldness 
be  a  truth?  Their  relations,  would  not  these  be  real? 
Their  distinct  places  in  the  world-order,  would  not  these 
things  be  objects  of  possible  true  or  false  thoughts  ?  If 
so,  must  not  there  be  once  more  the  inclusive  real  Self  for 
whom  these  truths  were  true,  these  separate  selves  inter- 
related, and  their  variety  absorbed  in  the  organism  of  its 
rational  meaning  ? 

There  is,  then,  at  last,  but  one  Self,  organically,  reflec- 
tively, consciously  inclusive  of  all  the  selves,  and  so  of  all 
truth.  I  have  called  this  self,  Logos,  problem-solver,  all- 
knower.  Consider,  then,  last  of  all,  his  relation  to  prob- 
lems. In  the  previous  lecture  we  doubted  many  things ; 
we  questioned  the  whole  seeming  world  of  the  outer  order; 
we  wondered  as  to  space  and  time,  as  to  nature  and  evo- 
lution, as  to  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  things.  Now 
he  who  wonders  is  like  him  who  doubts.  Has  his  wonder 


880  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

any  rationality  about  it  ?  Does  he  mean  anything  by  hia 
doubt  ?  Then  the  truth  that  he  means,  and  about  which 
he  wonders,  has  its  real  constitution.  As  wonderer,  he 
in  the  moment  possesses  not  this  solving  truth ;  he  appeals 
to  the  self  who  can  solve.  That  self  must  possess  the 
solution  just  as  surely  as  the  problem  has  a  meaning. 
The  real  nature  of  space  and  time,  the  real  beginning  of 
things,  where  matter  was  at  any  point  of  time  in  the  past, 
what  is  to  become  of  the  world's  energy :  these  are  mat- 
ters of  truth,  and  truth  is  necessarily  present  to  the  Self 
as  in  one  all-comprehending  self-completed  moment,  be- 
yond which  is  naught,  within  which  is  the  world. 

The  world,  then,  is  such  stuff  as  ideas  are  made  of. 
Thought  possesses  all  things.  But  the  world  is  n't  unreal. 
It  extends  infinitely  beyond  our  private  consciousness, 
because  it  is  the  world  of  an  universal  mind.  What  facts 
it  is  to  contain  only  experience  can  inform  us.  There  is 
no  magic  that  can  anticipate  the  work  of  science.  Abso- 
lutely the  only  thing  sure  from  the  first  about  this  world, 
however,  is  that  it  is  intelligent,  rational,  orderly,  essen- 
tially comprehensible,  so  that  all  its  problems  are  some- 
where solved,  all  its  darkest  mysteries  are  known  to  the 
supreme  Self.  {  This  Self  infinitely  and  reflectively  tran- 
scends our  consciousness,  and  therefore,  since  it  includes 
us,  it  is  at  the  very  least  a  person,  and  more  definitely 
conscious  than  we  are  ;  for  what  it  possesses  is  self -reflect- 
ing knowledge,  and  what  is  knowledge  awar£  of  itself, 
but  consciousness  ?  Beyond  the  seeming  wreck  and  chaos 
of  our  finite  problems,  its  eternal  insight  dwells,  there- 
fore, in  absolute  and  supreme  majesty.  Yet  it  is  not  far 
from  every  one  of  us.  There  is  no  least  or  most  transient 
thought  that  flits  through  a  child's  mind,  or  that  troubles 
with  the  faintest  line  of  care  a  maiden's  face,  and  that 
still  does  not  contain  and  embody  something  of  this  divine 
Logos. 


X 


LECTURE  XIL 

PHYSICAL     LAW     AND     FREEDOM:  —  THE     WORLD     OP 
DESCRIPTION  AND  THE  WORLD   OF  APPRECIATION. 

WE  return  from  the  general  notion  of  the  world  as  the 
universe  of  the  Logos,  to  the  business  of  trying  to  inter- 
pret the  facts  of  experience.  "  Ye  men  of  Galilee,  why 
stand  ye  gazing  up  into  heaven  ?  "  We  must  go  into  all 
the  world  and  preach  the  gospel  of  this  rationality  and 
unity  of  the  truth,  until  the  most  unspiritual  and  misbe- 
lieving of  phenomena  shall  have  been  converted.  Our 
business  is  not  that  of  gazing,  but  of  interpreting.  And 
it  is  hard  indeed  so  to  interpret  idealism  that  it  shall  seem 
to  the  ordinary  mind  anything  but  an  idle  comment  upon 
the  general  connectedness  of  things. 

The  business  of  the  present  lecture  is  with  the  idealistic 
interpretation  of  the  outer  order.  In  what  precise  sense 
is  this  world  in  space  and  in  time  still  real  for  us  ?  Is 
the  true  world  one  of  rigid  necessity,  or  is  it  a  world  of 
free  and  spiritual  ideals  ?  What  place  in  it  have  the  sci- 
entific notions  of  causality,  and  of  such  physical  truths  as 
energy  and  matter  ?  In  what  sense  has  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  a  place  in  this  universe  of  the  Logos  ?  Is  this 
world  a  moral  order  ?  And  is  it  a  world  where  a  man's 
mind  is  still  dependent  upon  his  nervous  mechanism,  as 
empirical  science  assures  us?  And  what  ultimate  connec- 
tion does  idealism  recognize  between  finite  mind  and  the 
truth  that  physical  science  calls  matter  ? 

These  questions,  technically  called  the  problems  of  a 
philosophical  cosmology,  are  before  us.  The  study  of 
them  is  hard  and  dry.  The  exposition  must  of  necessity 


382  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

be  in  some  places  extremely  intricate,  in  others  far  too 
dogmatic  and  aphoristic.  The  outcome  may  be  unex- 
pected, and  even  light-giving.  The  fashion  wherein  we 
shall  attack  the  undertaking  will  be  in  some  respects  dif- 
ferent from  the  traditional  one  ;  but  we  shall  still  at  every 
step  be  guided  by  the  lessons  of  our  historical  lectures. 

I. 

Despite  our  idealism,  and  in  fact  even  because  of  our 
idealism,  the  world  of  experience  is  to  appear  to  us,  in 
what  follows,  as  at  least  the  outward  aspect  of  a  genuinely 
real  world.  We  have  asked,  What  sort  of  a  world  is  it  ? 
The  answer  has  been,  It  is  a  world  of  outer  and  ideal 
truth,  a  world  of  mind.  The  doctrine  of  the  idealist  is 
not  one  that  involves  or  encourages  any  doubt  that  there 
is  truth  beyond  his  own  rprivate  and  finite  selfhood.  A 
popular  and  trivial  objection  to  idealism,  often  repeated 
by  critics  who  comprehend  it  not,  accuses  each  finite  ideal- 
istic thinker  of  believing  more  in  this  his  finite  self  than 
in  anybody  or  anything  else.  But,  on  the  contrary,  as 
we  have  seen,  it  is  only  the  idealist  who  has  a  reasonable 
account  to  give  of  his  faith  in  outer  truth,  and  of  his  own 
relation  thereto.  This  outer  truth  is  for  him  the  content 
of  the  transcendent  personality  of  the  Logos,  of  whom  our 
experience  is  a  fragmentary  suggestion.  As  I  have 
pointed  out  elsewhere,  in  the  book  to  which  I  have  already 
referred,  it  is  just  the  popular,  the  common-sense  notion 
of  external  reality,  for  which  the  outer  world  is  a  bare 
postulate,  a  mere  practical  assumption.1  Only  idealism, 

1  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  304-305.  —  "  If  the  history 
of  popular  speculation  on  these  topics  could  be  written,  how  much  of 
cowardice  and  shuffling  would  be  found  in  the  behavior  of  the  nat- 
ural mind  before  the  question  :  '  How  dost  thou  know  an  external 
world  ?  '  Instead  of  simply  and  plainly  answering,  '  I  mean  by  the 
external  world  in  the  first  place  something  that  I  accept  or  demand, 
that  I  posit,  postulate,  actually  construct  on  the  basis  of  sense-data,1 
the  natural  man  gives  us  all  kinds  of  vague  compromise  answers.  . . . 


PHYSICAL  LAW  AND  FREEDOM.          383 

with  its  theory  of  the  world  of  the  Logos  as  the  one  objec- 
tive reality,  implied  by  every  doubt  and  half-conscious 
belief  of  every  finite  fragment  of  this  true  self,  finds  a 
warrant  for  the  postulates  of  common-sense,  converts  the 
mere  faith  in  the  outer  world  into  an  insight,  possesses  an 
objective  truth  in  coming  thus  to  an  awareness  of  our 
relation  to  our  own  deepest  nature,  and  interprets  our  own 
deepest  nature  by  showing  that  it  is  not  our  finite  self- 
hood merely  as  such,  but  is  through  and  through  objec- 
tive.1 

ii. 

This  being  premised  as  to  the  idealist's  attitude  towards 
the  objective  truth,  our  next  undertaking  must  be,  to 
define  more  exactly  the  characteristics  that  objective 
truth,  as  such,  possesses.  For  such  a  definition  will  of 
necessity  throw  light  on  the  nature  of  the  world  in  which 
we  find  ourselves.  This  task  is  a  very  hard  one,  and  can 
be  accomplished  only  by  advancing  from  one  tentative 
definition  to  another. 

We  must  begin,  therefore,  with  a  provisional  definition 
of  the  genuine  outer  reality  as  distinguished  from  any 
seeming  outer  world.  What  character,  we  ask,  is  the 
essential  character  of  an  objective  truth  as  such  ?  What 
do  we  mean  by  the  outer  order  ?  The  natural  and  provi- 

The  ultimate  motive  with  the  every-day  man  is  the  will  to  have  an 
external  world.  .  .  .  We  construct  but  do  not  receive  the  external 
reality."  I  quote  this  passage  here  because  some  of  my  critics  have 
taken  it,  strangely  enough,  as  the  expression  of  my  own  idealism. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  expressly  stated  in  the  book  in  question  as  the 
substance  of  the  popular  and  every-day  point  of  view,  to  which  only 
a  genuine  idealism  ever  gives  any  sound  and  objective  basis. 

1  It  is  of  this  objective  truth  that  on  p.  332  of  the  Religions  A  sped 
I  ventured  to  speak  as  of  something  "  not  onr  postulate."  Of  this 
absolute  aspect  of  the  outer  truth,  later  chapters  of  that  work  sought 
to  give  proof.  Yet,  in  common  with  other  objective  idealists,  I 
have  occasionally  had  the  fortune  to  be  spoken  of  as  one  who  does 
not  pretend  to  know  any  truth  beyond  the  finite  self,  but  only  to  pos- 
tulate such  truth. 


384  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

sionally  acceptable  answer  is,  that  from  our  human  point 
of  view,  the  outer  order,  in  so  far  at  least  as  it  is  the 
object  of  science,  is  simply  so  much  of  the  truth  of  the 
self  as  is  revealed,  through  our  experience,  and  to  our 
finite  consciousness,  in  aspects  that  are  universal  and 
abiding,  and  not  merely  private,  fleeting,  and  momentary. 
The  contrast  between  the  inner  and  the  outer  is  generally 
recognized,  in  fact,  as  the  contrast  between  the  transient 
and  the  permanent  in  our  outer  experience.  What  per- 
sists in  experience,  must,  we  say,  correspond  to  some  real 
truth  beyond  our  private  selves.  In  this  sense  we  call  a 
dream  unreal,  because  all  the  dream-people  and  the 
dream-objects  vanish  when  we  awake.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  call  the  matter  of  physical  nature  real,  because 
its  quantity  appears  to  be  unchangeable,  in  so  far  as  our 
experience  enables  us  to  measure  this  quantity.  For  a 
similar  reason  it  is  that  Professor  Tait  has  frequently 
argued  that  from  the  physical  point  of  view  the  two  cer- 
tain realities  of  the  outer  order  are  matter  and  energy 
(the  latter  being  distinguished  very  decidedly  from  what 
is  technically  called  force).  For  these  two,  says  Profes- 
sor Tait,  are  permanent  throughout  the  whole  range  of 
scientific  experience.  But  at  all  events,  whether  any 
given  theory  as  to  what  the  permanent  elements  in  expe- 
rience may  be  proves  correct  or  no,  it  seems  very  fair 
indeed  to  say,  at  the  outset,  that  the  objective,  the  outer 
reality  is  for  us  mortals  that  which  is  experienced  as 
enduring. 

Yet  permanence,  as  such,  is  not  the  only  character  of 
the  reality  that  we  call  outer.  There  is  another  character, 
closely  associated  with  permanence,  that  is  of  still  deeper 
meaning.  We  are  accustomed,  namely,  to  distinguish  the 
inner  from  the  outer  by  saying  that  their  contrast  is  that 
between  what  only  some  one  finite  consciousness,  or  only 
a  certain  limited  number  of  such  consciousnesses  expe- 
rience, in  their  relative  and  fleeting  life  of  limitations, 


PHYSICAL  LAW  AND  FREEDOM.  385 

and  that  which  all  must  experience,  in  so  far  as  they 
share  in  a  common  rationality.  As  I  now  am,  I  feel  pain 
or  pleasure.  That  is,  in  itself  considered,  just  my  pain  or 
pleasure,  in  so  far  as  I  am  this  finite  and  changing  bit 
of  a  self,  bound  here  to  these  moments  of  time.  That 
pleasure  or  pain,  then,  for  the  first,  exists  only  in  me  and 
in  nobody  else.  The  world  of  the  true  and  absolute  Self 
contains  that  fact,  but  contains  it  here  only.  The  true 
Self  has  the  pleasure  or  pain,  but  only  in  so  far  forth  as 
he  is  limited  to  me.  You  know  nothing  directly  concern- 
ing it.  You  are  another  bit  of  a  self,  like  me  ;  you  have 
your  feelings,  I  mine.  It  is  true  that  in  order  even  to  bft 
thus  bounded  in  time  and  experience,  we  must  have  a  real 
and  organic  communion  of  life  in  and  through  the  one 
Spirit.  It  is  he  who  feels  and  works  in  us.  No  fragment 
of  our  life  but  is  his.  But  our  feelings,  the  facts  of  our 
inner  life  as  such,  are  his  only  in  so  far  as  he  is  conceived 
under  the  form  and  the  limitations  of  our  various  finite 
selves  and  moments  of  life. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  now  can  think  of  numbers,  and 
when  I  think  that  three  and  two  together  make  five,  I 
think  by  virtue  indeed  of  feelings  that  are  mine  and  not 
yours,  but  with  reference  to  a  truth  that  I  mean,  and  that 
in  the  finite  and  individual  sense  of  the  words  is  neither 
yours  nor  mine,  but  that  is  truth  for  all  of  us.  So  space 
and  time,  if  indeed  they  are  more  than  mere  seemings  of 
our  human  point  of  view,  are  such  universal  and  conse- 
quently ever  present  truths.  To  say  that  space  and  time 
are  objectively  real  is  to  say,  then,  that  these  things,  re- 
vealed though  they  are  through  your  feelings  and  through 
mine  (and  so  far  merely  facts  of  the  inner  life),  are  yet 
truth  for  all  of  us,  like  the  numbers,  and  not  only  for  all 
of  us  men,  but  for  every  intelligent  bit  of  a  self  in  all  the 
universe,  be  he  archangel  or  dweller  in  Mars.  To  doubt 
the  reality  of  space  is  to  doubt  just  this  opinion.1 

1  An  objector  may  say  that,  if  this  account  of  the  nature  of  outer 


886  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

There  is,  then,  for  us,  this  provisional  contrast  betweefc 
the  inner  order  and  the  outer.     Whether  this  contra;- 
expresses  the  last  word  of  philosophy,  we  have  yet  to  s' 
So  far  it  isn't  a  contrast  that  enables  us  to  separate  ti 
two  orders,  but  it  is  one  that  does  enable  us  to  distinguisl 
them.     This  contrast  is  that  between  the  permanent  an\ 
universal  elements  of   experience  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  private  and  fleeting  elements  of  experience  on  the 
other.     Our  finite  life  has  its  inner  aspect  in  so  far  as  it* 
is  just  individual,  the  truth  of  our  moments  as  such,  the' 
breaking  of  just  our  waves  of  consciousness  on  the  beach. 
But  our  finite  consciousness  relates  to  outer  and  physical 
truth  in  so  far  as  it  means  something  that  may  be  pre- 
sent for  any  and  all  intelligent  moments  and  individuals. 
When   one  questions,  as  we  did  in   an   earlier  lecture, 

truth  be  even  provisionally  accepted,  the  laws  of  number  would  be 
objectively  true  in  no  other  sense  than  the  laws  of  physics.  But  (so 
the  objector  will  ask)  are  numbers  real  in  the  same  sense  in  which 
matter  is  real  ?  I  answer,  It  is  a  familiar  proposition  of  what  is 
called  modern  positivism  in  philosophy  that  the  laws  of  arithmetic, 
of  geometry,  and  of  mathematics  generally,  are  merely  physical 
truths  of  a  peculiar  simplicity  and  abstractness.  This  proposition 
of  positivism  I  fully  accept.  Numbers,  in  so  far  as  they  are  ab- 
stractions, are  indeed  unreal,  because  our  experience  is  always  of  a 
number  of  physical  facts.  But  the  laws  of  arithmetic  are  laws  of 
the  physical  world,  and  are  true  because  they  are  so.  To  be  sure, 
the  physical  world  is  not  what  many  who  call  themselves  positivists 
take  it  to  be.  It  is  the  world  of  the  truth,  in  so  far  forth  as  this 
truth  is  public  property  for  all  finite  intelligences  ;  it  is  the  world  of 
the  truth  that  lasts,  and  that  can  be  shared,  that  is  n't  the  private 
property  of  momentary  consciousness,  like  our  feelings,  but  that, 
although  revealed  to  each  of  us  through  his  feelings,  has  a  commu- 
nicable, an  universal  aspect.  In  this  sense,  the  principle  that  three 
and  two  make  five,  or  such  a  principle  as  the  binomial  theorem,  is 
as  genuinely  physical  a  law  as  is  the  law  of  gravitation  ;  save  that 
the  last-mentioned  law  deals  with  a  far  more  complex  and  concrete 
reality,  and  may  have,  for  that  very  reason,  a  far  more  limited  scope. 
In  what  sense  the  arithmetical  laws  are  a  priori  and  absolutely  uni« 
rersal,  we  shall  see  later. 


PHYSICAL  LAW  AND  FREEDOM.          387 

Aether  the  world  of  the  interwoven  spirals  and  streams 

r  stars,  the  world  of  the  consolidating  matter  and  of  the 

inning  down  "  energy,  is  what  it  seems  to  be,  one's 

pstion  means  this :  Is  this  world  that  we  men  have  been 

.jiinking   out  as  we   interpreted   our  human  feelings,  a 

n-ld  of  truth  that  would  necessarily  be  present  to  other 

.nan  human  intelligences  in  the  same  form  as  those  in 

vhich  it  is  present  to  us  ?     If  the  archangels  can  count, 

ii;  the  inhabitants  of  Mars  can  add,  they  will  all  agree 

with  us  that  three  and  two  make  five.     But  we  know  not 

as  yet  whether  they  would  or  would  not,  in  case  they  came 

to  think  of  the  same  truth  that  we  think  of  when  we  look 

at  the  stars,  agree  with  us  as  to  the  forms  and  laws  of 

this   truth.     Therefore,  and   in   no   other   sense,  do   we 

doubt  whether  the  world  of  the  stars  is  what  it  seems, 

and  whether  we  are  after  all  playing  with  the  "  pebbles 

on  the  beach." 

in. 

What  we  want,  then,  next  in  order,  is  a  fuller  state- 
ment of  what  is  implied  in  this  provisional  criterion  of 
objectivity.  Each  of  us  is  thinking  in  more  or  less  frag- 
mentary ways  and  moments.  We  want  some  means  of 
distinguishing  the  essentially  private  in  our  thoughts  from 
the  permanent,  the  public,  and  the  universal. 

Our  effort  to  define  such  a  criterion  must  begin  in  an 
extremely  naive  and  simple  fashion.  If  I  am  dealing 
with  my  neighbor,  and  he  says  that  he  has  experiences 
which  stand  for  outer  truth,  and  which  are  n't  merely  his 
private  feelings,  my  first  disposition  is  to  demand  that  he 
shall  put  me  where  I  can  get  these  experiences,  too,  or 
something  that  we  shall  both  recognize  as  similar  expe- 
riences. If  he  sees  a  rainbow,  and  regards  it  as  standing 
for  a  real  and  outer  truth,  as  being  essentially  an  objec- 
tive idea,  and  I  doubt  that  ho  sees  the  rainbow,  I  ask 
to  be  shown  it.  If,  looking  towards  the  quarter  of  the 
heavens  to  which  he  points,  I  see  that  to  which  I  readily 


888  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

apply  the  same  name,  I  am  quickly  convinced,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  untutored  common  sense,  that  we  are  both 
seeing  the  same  rainbow.  A  very  close  and  critical  ob- 
servation would,  however,  erelong  prove  to  us  both,  as 
he  and  I  moved  about,  that  his  rainbow  and  mine  do  not 
occupy  precisely  the  same  apparent  place,  with  reference 
to  our  experiences  of  other  objects.  If  we  become  aware 
of  this  fact,  we  may  first  begin  to  differ  as  to  whose  rain- 
bow is  the  real  one,  and  later,  with  proper  instruction,  we 
shall  come  to  see  that  just  because  an  essential  character 
of  the  visible  rainbow,  namely,  its  seeming  place  in  the 
world  of  the  things  upon  whose  reality  we  are  already 
agreed,  is  a  matter  of  the  point  of  view,  the  rainbow  it- 
self must  have  a  decidedly  different  sort  of  physical 
objectivity  from  that  possessed  by  other  objects,  say,  for 
instance,  trees  and  mountains. 

So  far,  then,  the  test  of  objectivity  is  the  apparent 
similarity  of  our  human  experiences  when  two  or  more 
of  us  are  in  given  circumstances.  This  similarity,  how- 
ever, is  critically  examined  by  comparing,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, the  accounts  that  we  can  give  to  one  another  of  the 
relations  amongst  the  objects  of  our  experience.  In 
other  words,  the  test  of  objectivity  is,  so  far,  permanence 
and  community  of  ideas,  and  the  test  of  the  permanence 
and  community  of  ideas  is  the  sameness  of  the  descrip- 
tion that  we  can  give  to  one  another  of  the  relations 
amongst  the  various  parts  of  our  private  experience. 

Here  at  once  appears  an  important  distinction  in  our 
private  experiences  themselves.  As  they  come  to  us,  they 
are  very  complex,  and  they  interest  us  from  moment  to 
moment  in  ways  that  embody  just  our  private  mood.  But 
one  interest  we  take  in  them  which  brings  to  pass  for  ua 
just  that  distinction  upon  which  the  whole  of  natural 
science  depends.  This  is  the  interest  in  describing  them. 
The  distinction  that  it  introduces  is  one  between  what  ii 
describable,  and  what  is  only  appreciable.  As  my  expe« 


PHYSICAL   LAW   AND   FREEDOM.  389 

rience  comes  to  me  at  any  moment,  I  may,  namely,  be 
said  to  appreciate  it  in  some  fashion.  That  is,  it  feels 
to  me  so  or  so.  I  like  it  or  I  hate  it.  Or  again,  where 
pleasure  and  pain  are  n't  marked,  still  there  is  an  essen- 
tially indescribable  value  that  my  experience  has  for  me 
when  regarded  just  as  my  own  feeling.  Tastes  have  one 
sort  of  worth  for  me,  colors  another.  An  electric  shock 
from  a  Leyden  jar  is  appreciated  as  a  peculiar  and  atro- 
cious interruption  of  all  other  trains  of  feeling,  such  that 
its  painful  value  is  surely,  but  inexpressibly,  different 
from  that  of  all  other  experiences.  Such  elementary  and 
personal  interests  in  the  passing  moment,  such  essentially 
dumb  appreciations,  have  in  them  few  elements  or  none 
whereby  we  can  test  whether  or  no  we  have  them  in 
common  with  our  neighbors.  Real  sympathy,  real  shar- 
ing of  even  the  most  elementary  appreciations  there  may 
be  ;  and  of  the  significance  of  such,  in  case  they  exist,  we 
shall  hear  something  later  on.  For  the  moment  we  are 
disposed  to  call  our  elementary  appreciations  indescrib- 
able, and  to  regard  them  as  the  most  characteristic  in- 
stances of  private  and  individual  experience,  which  reveal 
merely  wie  es  uns  zu  Muthe  ist,  not  what  can  be  called 
objective. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  certain  elements  of  our 
experience  which  we  regard  as  describable.  How  my  own 
hat  feels  when  I  pick  it  up,  taking  it  from  amongst  a  large 
number  of  hats  in  a  dimly  lighted  cloak-room,  is  something 
that  I  can  only  appreciate.  I  know  my  hat  by  the  feel 
of  it  when  I  pick  it  up.  How  I  know  it  I  can't  tell  you. 
On  the  other  hand,  that  I  find  my  hat  hung  a  peg  higher 
than  I  myself  left  it,  that  it  is  hung  on  the  right  or  the 
left  side  of  the  room,  that  just  as  I  took  it  the  clock  struck 
ten,  these  are  experiences  that  I  pretend  to  be  able  to 
describe.  I  can  tell  you,  so  I  say,  just  what  I  mean  by 
them.  I  hold  them  to  be  experiences  that  anybody  might 
have,  whether  he  felt  about  my  hat  as  I  do,  or  did  not. 


390  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

Now  the  character  that  makes  an  experience  describa. 
ble,  involves  two  facts  concerning  its  nature.     The  first 
fact  is  that  an  experience,  just  in  so  far  forth  as  it  is 
describable,  is  reproducible  at  pleasure  by  the  person  who 
can  describe  it.     For  him,  indeed,  the  act  of  description 
is  always  a  voluntary  and  more  or  less  complete  or  abbre- 
viated reproduction  of  the  experience  described.     As  he 
thus  reproduces  for  the  purpose  of  description,  he  has  a 
sense  of  his  own  power  over  the  reproduction.     The  feel- 
ing- was  confined  to  the  moment ;  the  description  already 
involves  a  communication  from  moment  to  moment  within 
a  man's  own  life.     Here,  already,  is  a  partial  interpreta- 
tion of  the  permanence  which  we  before  recognized  as  a 
character  of  outer  truth.     The  describable,  as  such,  has 
for  us  one  sort  of  permanence.    The  second  fact  is  that,  in 
the  unity  of  consciousness,  the  relations  amongst  feelings 
which  permit  us  to  describe  the  content  of  any  moment 
must  themselves  fall  under  certain  general  types,  or,  as  we 
more  technically  say,  under  either  Forms  or  Categories  of 
experience.     By  forms  of  experience  we  mean  the  charac- 
teristics which  we  express  by  saying  that  our  experience 
involved  ideas  of  space  or  of  time ;  that  is,  that  our  feel- 
ings were  those  of  extensive  size  or  of  shape,  or  of  dura- 
tion.    By  categories  of  experience  we  mean  at  present  the 
characteristics  which  enable  us  to  say,  that  what  we  expe- 
rienced consisted  of  one  or  of  many  feelings,  of  like  or  of 
different  feelings,  or  again,  of  feelings  that  differed  from 
one  another,  or  resembled  one  another,  in  quantity  or  in 
quality.     There  are  many  other  such  categories  used  in 
the  work  of  physical  science.     Here  is  no  place  to  enu- 
merate or  to  explain  them.     Our  meaning  at  present  is 
that  the  formless  and   uncategorized    experience,  in   so 
far  as  it  is  such,  appears,  from  our  present  and  provi- 
sional point  of  view,  a  merely  private  appreciation,  which 
does  not  reveal  outer  truth,  while  the  well  formed  and 
sharply  categorized  experience  is  in  so  far  regarded  as. 


PHYSICAL   LAW   AND   FREEDOM.  391 

capable  of  description,  and  therefore  as  apt  to  reveal 
outer  truth.  I  can't  tell  you  much  about  the  curious 
minor  feelings  of  vague  depression  that  once  followed,  in 
my  own  case,  an  attack  of  influenza.  If  ycu  have  passed 
through  a  similar  experience,  you  may  appreciate  my  feel- 
ings. But  I  can  never  be  quite  sure  that  you  do.  On 
the  contrary,  I  can  tell  you,  if  I  like,  a  good  deal  about 
any  experience  that  I  can  define  in  terms  of  known  geo- 
metrical figures,  of  numbers,  of  duration,  of  size,  or  of 
some  law  of  the  recurrence  of  experiences.  "  Ten  strokes 
of  the  clock,"  "  two  feet  to  the  right,"  "  a  regular  recur- 
rence of  wind  and  rain,  following,  on  several  occasions,  a 
rapidly  falling  barometer,"  —  all  these  are  phrases  of 
description,  —  not  indeed  of  unlimited  or  of  complete  de- 
scription ;  for  all  these  phrases  suggest  elementary  expe- 
riences of  sound,  of  sight,  and  of  other  indescribable  feel- 
ings, that  are  in  so  far  mere  appreciations.  But  they  are 
phrases  of  description  in  so  far  as  they  express  definite 
relations  in  space  and  in  time,  and  relations  that  fall 
under  such  typical  categories  as  quantity,  number,  recur- 
rence, likeness,  regularity,  and  other  such  notions,  —  these 
relations  of  experience  being  so  far  under  our  control  that 
we  can  reproduce  at  will  typical  instances  which  exem- 
plify them.  All  such  phrases  pretend  to  tell  something 
about  a  conceived  outer  reality.  Of  such  is  the  kingdom 
of  natural  science. 

To  recapitulate :  (1)  An  experience  is  indescribable  if 
I  lose  it  beyond  clear  recall  as  soon  as  it  is  gone.  In 
order  to  be  describable  it  must  contain  aspects  that  I  can 
reconstruct  out  of  their  elements  at  pleasure,  so  long  as 
my  intelligent  memory  lasts.  I  can  describe  only  what  I 
can  keep  and  permanently  think  out.  (2)  In  the  next 
place,  this  my  power  to  think  out  and  reconstruct  my 
experience  must,  in  every  case  of  description,  depend 
upon  my  discovery  of  the  forms  and  the  categories  that 
the  experience  exemplifies.  (3)  Only  that  which  is  re- 


392  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

vealed  through  our  experience  in  describable  form,  how. 
ever,  has,  so  far  in  our  discussion,  approved  itself  aa 
objective,  as  public  property,  as  universal.  It  may  indeed 
be  that  we  shall  need  to  modify  soon  this  provisional  and 
tentative  account ;  and  that  some  of  the  objective  truths 
are  indescribable.  But  so  far  we  have  not  found  in- 
stances of  the  sort.  Thus  far  describable  facts  and  objec- 
tive facts  mean  pretty  much  the  same  thing  for  us  who 
live  under  ordinary  human  limitations.  The  business  of 
natural  science  is  the  "  description  of  the  world  of  experi- 
ence." And  the  real  is  so  far  the  describable. 

With  such  a  provisional  definition  of  the  real  in  mind, 
let  us  glance  back  at  the  world  of  the  mere  appreciations, 
to  bring  out  the  contrast  now  defined.  The  noblest  and 
the  most  stupid  appreciations,  it  would  seem,  may,  and 
in  many  cases  do  alike  exemplify  this  formless  and  uncate- 
gorized  character  of  the  merely  private  and  so  far  illusory 
experience.  On  the  other  hand,  the  most  artistically 
worthless  fact  in  what  we  call  nature,  the  physical  thing 
that  we  appreciate  least  and  regard  as  of  least  worth,  will 
exemplify,  in  so  far  as  it  is  an  outer  fact,  this  definable, 
this  universal  character,  this  conformity  to  rules  of  de- 
scription, this  presence  in  space  and  in  time,  this  submis- 
sion to  categories,  which  together  make  natural  science 
possible.  The  reasons  in  both  cases  appear  so  far  to  be 
ones  already  pointed  out.  What  is  describable  is  as  such 
public  property.  A  man  who  knows  it  once  for  what  it 
is,  and  who  keeps  his  wits,  can  think  out  its  characters, 
can  mentally  reproduce  the  relationships  of  its  elements, 
can  tell  his  neighbor  about  it,  and  can  feel  tolerably  sure 
that  if  any  intelligent  being  got  into  the  right  place  in 
the  world-order,  he  too  would  experience  something  of 
much  the  same  description,  however  colored  his  inner  feel- 
ings might  be.  On  the  other  hand,  what  is  n't  so  defined 
by  space  and  time  and  number  and  quantity,  and  the 
other  types  of  intelligent  experience,  as  to  have  the  rel» 


PHYSICAL   LAW   AND   FREEDOM. 

tions  of  its  parts  describable  is,  first  of  all,  when  once  it 
is  past,  like  the  "  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead."  It 
comes  not  back.  While  it  is  present  it  is  like  "  the  tears, 
idle  tears,"  whereof  "  I  know  not  what  they  mean."  It  is 
like  — 

"  That  sense,  which  at  the  winds  of  spring 
In  rarest  visitation,  or  the  voice 
Of  one  beloved,  heard  in  youth  alone, 
Fills  the  faint  eyes  with  falling  tears  which  dim 
The  radiant  looks  of  unbewailing  flowers, 
And  leaves  this  peopled  earth  a  solitude 
When  it  returns  no  more." 

The  merely  appreciable,  then,  as  such,  is,  in  our  human 
world,  notoriously  fleeting.  So  with  all  the  lovely  things 
in  Schiller's  lines  :  — 

"  Warum  bin  ich  verganglich,  0  Zeus  f     So  fragte  die  Schonlieit. 
Macht  dich  dock,  sagte  der  Gott,  nur  das  Vergdngliche  schbn  I 
Uud  die  Liebe,  die  Jugend,  der  Thau  und  die  Blumeu  vernahmen  's  ; 
Alle  gingen  sie  weg,  weinend  von  Jupiter's  Thron." 

The  atoms,  as  describable,  seem  thus  far  to  be  realities, 
and  they  survive.  The  noble  emotions  of  youth  and  of 
lovers  die.  If,  however,  this  provisional  definition  of  the 
real  is  to  be  in  any  way  supplemented,  and  if  the  apprecia- 
tions too  are  to  become  of  eternal  significance,  as  the  poets 
desire,  then  the  appreciations,  it  would  seem,  must  not  be 
the  appreciations  of  merely  temporal  and  transient  beings, 
but  of  some  being  that  himself  does  not  live  in  moments, 
as  we  mortals  on  earth  do,  but  that  appreciates  in  eter- 
nity, or  that  shares  in  such  an  eternal  appreciation. 
**  Only  that  which  never  has  been,"  in  our  world  of  time, 
as  Schiller  tells  us,  "  that  alone  grows  never  old."  He  is 
speaking  of  course  of  appreciable  realities,  not  of  physical 
ones.  Or,  again,  the  enduring  appreciation  may  be  con- 
ceived as  belonging  to  an  immortal  soul,  that  survives  the 
loveliness  of  all  passing  moments  :  — 

"  Sweet  spring,  full  of  sweet  days  and  roses, 
A  box  where  sweets  compacted  lie, 


394  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

My  music  shows  ye  have  your  closes, 
And  all  must  die. 

"  Only  a  sweet  and  virtuous  soul 
Like  seasoned  timber  never  gives  ; 
But  though  the  whole  world  turn  to  coal 
Then  chiefly  lives." 

Or  finally,  a  community  of  such  free  spirits  might  share 
together  the  lasting  appreciation.  But  such  eternal  ap- 
preciation is  confessedly,  for  us  mortals,  far  too  much  an 
ideal.  Whether  we  do  in  any  measure  partake  of  such 
an  appreciative  consciousness  remains  to  be  seen,  and 
forms  one  of  the  deepest  problems  of  constructive  philoso- 
phy. For  the  moment,  we  have  suggested  to  us,  in  this 
distinction  between  the  outer  reality  which  is  describable, 
and  the  inner  appreciation  which  is  unreal,  one  tragedy  of 
our  finitude,  namely,  that  our  descriptive  consciousness, 
coldly  and  dispassionately  devoting  itself  to  the  typical, 
to  the  relatively  universal  structure  of  our  experience, 
seems  to  seize  upon  what  is  for  that  very  reason  real, 
abiding,  yes,  like  the  numbers  and  the  atoms,  everlasting 
in  time,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  that  which  makes  the 
moment  often  so  dear  to  us,  its  appreciable  aspect,  its 
value,  is  indescribable,  and  so  essentially  private  and 
fleeting.  This  it  is  that  makes  science  often  so  cold  to 
us,  and  facts  so  lifeless,  while  the  glowing  world  of  appre* 
elation  appears  to  be,  after  all,  so  fantastic  and  vain ;  — 

"  Grau,  theurer  Freund,  ist  alle  Theorie, 
Und  griin  des  Lebens  goldener  Baum.' 

So  far,  however,  we  have  come  seeking  for  the  conse- 
quences of  our  provisional  definition  of  the  essential 
nature  of  the  outer  order.  We  see  now,  plainer  than  at 
first,  that  the  outer  order  as  viewed  by  us  men  must  be 
one  of  well-knit  and  universal  law,  structure,  order,  that 
it  must  be  in  definite  forms,  subject  to  categories,  inde« 


PHYSICAL  LAW  AND  FREEDOM.          395 

pendent  of  momentary  caprices.  All  this,  as  we  begin  to 
see,  it  must  be  in  order  to  be  describable.  And  describa- 
ble  it  must  appear  to  us  in  order  that  the  content  of  one 
intelligent  moment  of  conscious  life  should  be,  under  the 
conditions  of  our  finite  human  existence,  communicable  to 
another.  In  short,  the  outer  and  natural  order  is  begin- 
ning to  show  itself  in  its  complete  character  as  a  "  World 
of  Description,"  that,  as  such,  is  bound  to  appear  in  our 
experience  as  a  world  of  permanence  and  of  necessity. 
Forms  and  categories  are  necessary  to  description,  and 
these  mean  order  and  fixity  of  type. 

On  the  other  hand  there  may  already  appear,  on  the 
horizon  of  our  discussion,  the  notion  of  another  sort  of 
conceivable  reality,  different  from  our  natural  order,  but 
as  possible  in  the  logical  sense  as  ours,  namely,  the  real 
ity  of  what  we  may  call  a  World  of  Appreciation.  For 
consider,  were  our  human  intercourse  of  another  sort, 
were  all  the  moments  of  all  our  human  lives  directly 
appreciable  by  us  together  and  at  our  pleasure,  —  then 
the  world  of  our  accessible  truth  would  have  quite  another 
aspect  from  that  of  the  world  of  description.  Conceive, 
namely,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  and  as  an  ideal,  of 
beings  who  were  so  aware  of  their  common  relations  to 
the  true  Self  that  their  life  together  was  one  of  an  inti- 
mate spiritual  communion,  so  that  the  experience  of  each 
was  an  open  book  for  all  of  them.  In  other  words,  con- 
ceive of  beings  who  were  mutually  perfect  mind-readers 
one  of  another.  Their  highest  spiritual  world  would  be 
for  them  what,  in  our  finite  bondage,  our  physical  world 
of  the  outer  order  is  not  for  us,  a  world  of  "  one  undivided 
soul  of  many  a  soul."  The  truth  of  it  would  be  universal, 
without  having  to  be  first  abstractly  described.  Or,  to 
remind  ourselves  of  what  we  learned  in  studying  Hegel's 
characteristic  theory  of  universals,  the  community  of 
truth,  in  the  world  of  such  spirits,  would  be  rather  of  the 
Hegelian  type  of  universality,  than  of  the  ordinary  typo 


896  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

of  the  more  abstract  universality.  Forms  and  categories 
there  would  doubtless  be  in  the  experience  of  such  beings, 
but  the  necessity  for  such  forms  would  be  of  another 
kind.  The  experience  of  each  individual  would  there  be 
directly  and  organically  related  to  the  experience  of  all. 
It  wouM  n't  be  necessary  to  put  it  into  abstract  shape 
before  communicating  it.  Nor  would  the  appreciative 
moment,  once  passed,  be  for  each  individual  beyond  recall, 
leaving  this  peopled  earth  a  solitude  when  it  returned  no 
more.  For  each  spirit  in  that  free  world  would  read  at 
pleasure  his  own  past  mind  and  experience  as  well  as  his 
neighbor's,  would  not  abstractly  and  discursively  recon- 
struct, but  would  directly  acknowledge  the  world  of  his 
whole  inner  and  of  his  whole  outer  order,  by  virtue  of 
the  one  organic  and  complete  form  of  intercourse  which 
would  there  exist.  In  such  a  world  of  spiritual  inter- 
course, all  the  thoughts  of  one  man  would  become  directly 
the  object  of  his  neighbor's  thought.  In  such  a  case  we 
should  stand  in  the  presence  of  an  order  in  which  the  dis- 
tinction of  outer  and  inner  would  be  no  ultimate  one.  All 
would  be  appreciable,  spiritual,  significant.  But,  as  such, 
appreciative  mind-reading  is  under  ordinary  human  con- 
ditions denied  us,  what  we  mean  by  having  commoi* 
objects,  a  common  truth,  and  the  same  nature  of  things 
present  to  us  all,  is  expressible  only  by  saying  that  in  so 
far  as  we  can  describe  the  contents  of  our  moments  of 
experience,  and  communicate  these  descriptions  through 
imitative  gestures,  or  through  conventional  speech,  —  so 
far  and  no  further  does  our  experience  appear  to  us  to 
represent  the  permanent,  the  outer,  the  objective.  And 
hence,  however  the  objective  world  may  appear  to  freer 
spirits,  or  however  it  ultimately  appears  to  the  Self  in  his 
wholeness,  to  us  it  must  appear,  for  the  first,  as  a  world  of 
formed  and  well-categorized  experience,  that  is,  as  a  world 
of  orderly  universality.  For  only  orderly  universality  is 
describable. 


PHYSICAL   LAW   AND  FREEDOM.  397 

IV. 

I  must  beg  you  to  glance  back  once  more  over  the 
course  of  this  necessarily  intricate  argument.  We  have 
been  trying  to  define  what  is  meant  by  the  true  and  ob- 
jective, as  distinct  from  the  private  and  merely  subjective 
elements  of  our  human  experience.  We  have  provision- 
ally defined  the  physically  real,  for  us  men,  as  that  which 
we  experience  and  can,  describe.  We  have  defined  the 
business  of  natural  science,  therefore,  as  the  description 
of  the  content  of  experience.  We  have  formed  a  provi- 
sional notion  of  nature,  as  being  "  the  World  of  Descrip- 
tion." As  only  that  which  has  Form,  Categories,  Univer- 
sality, about  it  is  describable,  we  have  asserted  already 
that  this  world  of  description  must  be  a  world  of  rigid 
necessity. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  we  have  suggested  hypo- 
thetically  what  a  "  World  of  Appreciation  "  might  be.  It 
would  be  a  world  such  as  the  organic  Self  in  his  whole- 
ness might  have  present  to  him  at  a  glance,  or  such  as 
the  community  of  conceived  spiritual  mind-readers  might 
share.  It  would  be  a  world  whose  Universals  were  of 
the  type  that  Hegel  defined.  It  might  be  free  from 
the  type  of  necessity  that  our  order  of  nature  possesses. 
It  might  be  a  world  altogether  inspired  by  appreciative 
ideals ;  and  yet  it  would  be  a  world  of  objective  truth,  for 
each  individual  in  it,  each  conscious  moment  of  it,  would 
find  the  others  as  outer  and  yet  not  foreign  facts. 

But  now  we  must  turn  back  from  the  hypothetical  sug- 
gestion of  that  world  of  appreciation,  whose  reality  we 
have  yet  by  no  means  verified,  and  must  study  a  little 
more  closely  the  world  of  description,  —  the  world,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  which  our  actual  human  science  moves. 

This  world  of  empirical  science  suggests  a  well-known 
philosophical  problem  to  which  we  must  next  refer.  Sci- 
ence, as  everybody  knows,  assumes  that  the  physical  world 


398  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

is  one  where  the  law  of  causation  rules,  where  nature  ia 
uniform,  and  where,  in  general,  what  have  been  called 
axioms,  namely,  certain  obvious  and  a  priori  principles, 
are  valid.  Now  it  is  an  old  problem  how  empirical  sci- 
ence comes  by  these  a  priori  principles.  You  remember 
Hume's  doubts  about  the  "  original  of  our  idea  of  neces- 
sary connection."  You  remember  the  controversy  over 
the  innate  ideas.  You  remember  Kant's  "  Transcendental 
Deduction  of  the  Categories."  Now  in  our  day  many  stu- 
dents of  the  philosophy  of  science,  following  more  or  less 
unconsciously  in  the  footsteps  of  Kant,  have  been  more 
and  more  inclined  to  agree  upon  an  account  of  the  nature 
of  these  so-called  "  axioms  "  that  I  myself  regard  as  un- 
questionably on  the  right  track,  although  there  is  still 
much  to  be  done  in  developing  this  view  in  all  its  details.1 
According  to  this  view  the  one  postulate  of  physical  sci- 
ence is  that  the  real  objects  revealed  to  us  in  our  experi- 
ence are  describable  in  universal  terms,  and  are  so  whether 
these  objects  are  "  things  "  or  "  events."  In  order  to  be 
describable,  the  things  and  the  events  must  appear,  to  us 
men,  in  space  and  in  time,  because  these  forms  of  our  ex- 
perience are  actually  the  aspects  of  our  conscious  life  that 
we  have  to  use  as  the  basis  of  every  description.  Fur- 
thermore, in  order  to  make  our  description  valid  for  all 
intelligent  human  beings,  the  fashions  of  our  description 
have  to  be  universal.  We  can't  describe  the  unique,  e.  g., 
Shelley's  "  sense  that  at  the  winds  of  spring,"  etc.  That 
we  have  to  appreciate.  Therefore  it  is  n't  an  object  of 
scientific  experience.  Moreover,  in  order  to  describe,  we 

1  The  present  is  no  place  for  a  bibliography.  I  must  refer  to  the 
now  almost  classic  discussions  in  the  introductory  lecture  of  Kirch- 
hoff's  Vorlemngen  iiber  Mathematische  Physik,  in  the  Lectures  and  Es+ 
says  of  Clifford,  vol.  i.  pp.  111-123,  and  in  Mach's  Die  Mechanik  in 
Hirer  Entwickelung,  etc.  See,  for  a  popular  suggestion  of  some  re- 
lated views,  the  interesting  book  on  Fundamental  Problems,  by  Dr. 
Paul  Carus.  The  present  use  of  the  word  "description"  I  borrow 
from  Kirchhoff,  extending,  however,  his  notion  in  my  own  way. 


PHYSICAL   LAW  AND   FREEDOM.  399 

have  to  reduce  the  transient  to  the  permanent.  Other- 
wise the  description  would  not  be  independent  of  the 
appreciative  content  of  the  moment.  Hence  we  have  to  de- 
scribe in  terms  of  assumed  changeless  things  (e.  </.,  atoms, 
elements,  media,  —  in  a  word,  substances).  And  in  so  far 
as  the  world  of  experience  endlessly  changes,  we  have  to 
refer  (1)  these  changes  of  experience  to  changes  of  space 
and  time  relations  amongst  the  assumed  substances,  and 
(2)  the  ways  of  changing  themselves,  so  far  as  possible, 
to  universal  laws.  The  axiom  of  the  "permanence  of 
substance "  has  this  very  simple  meaning,  namely,  that 
in  so  far  as  I  can  describe  my  experience  to  other  men, 
who  stand  quite  outside  of  this  moment,  there  must  be 
plpnqp.nfcf  in  thft  thfopr  flmf.  i»  foe  object  of  this  experi- 
ence which  _are  quite  independent  of  the  particular  time 
Sghen  I  experienced  the  object  itselfy  In  fact,  so  far  as 
anybody  else,  at  any  other  time,  could  conceivably  expe- 
rience this  same  thing,  it  must,  ipso  facto,  be  changeless. 
And  unless  anybody  else  you  please  could  conceivably 
experience  this  same  thing,  either  at  the  same  time,  or  at 
any  other  time  you  please,  the  object  is  n't  public  property, 
and  I  am  doubtless  in  so  far  busied  with  my  private  ap- 
preciation. The  changing  elements  in  my  experience  of 
things  may,  however,  themselves  be  described,  in  so  far  as 
they  involve  changes  of  relation  amongst  the  permanent 
things  that  have  been  assumed  to  exist  in  space  and  time. 
For  types  of  change  must  have  permanent  descriptions.1 
From  this  point  of  view  events  too,  as  well  as  things,  may 
be  objects  of  scientific  experience,  i.  e.,  may  be  freed  from 

1  The  discovery  of  the  exact  meaning  of  this  truth  by  Galileo  and 
his  contemporaries  gave  rise  later  to  the  Calculus,  which  is  especially 
devoted  to  the  mathematical  description  of  the  permanent  types  of 
change  (cf.  Newton's  name,  Theory  of  Fluxions),  and  eventually  has 
brought  within  the  prospective  range  of  exact  science  the  vast  world 
of  "sublunary"  changes,  which  ancient  thought  found  almost  hope- 
less, or  only  sought  to  appreciate  in  terms  of  ideals  ;  cf,  Lasswitz, 
Die  Atomistik,  vol.  i.  pp.  79-85  aud  175-183. 


400  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

the  appreciative  privacy  of  the  momentary  experience. 
The  axiom  of  Causation  is  the  axiom  of  the  Describability 
of  Events,  in  so  far  as  they  are  real  and  public  and  are 
not  merely  events  as  privately  appreciated.  The  axiom 
of  the  Uniformity  of  Nature  is  the  axiom  that  the  event 
once  described,  i.  e.,  reduced  to  an  universal  type,  is  de- 
scribed forever.  Is  that  event  one  of  a  type  that  may  be- 
come a  possible  object  of  anybody's  experience,  —  then  it 
has  universal  and  unchangeable  characteristics.  These 
constitute  its  law.  Whoever  experienced  an  event  of  the 
type,  i.  e.,  an  event  involving  the  same  things  in  the  same 
time  and  space  relations,  would  observe  in  it  these  same 
characteristics.  For  otherwise  there  is  something  incom- 
municable, i.  e.,  merely  appreciable  about  the  event. 

All  these  thoughts  I  have  to  suggest  very  dogmatically. 
Let  a  few  brief  illustrations  indicate,  not  their  proof,  but 
their  meaning. 

First  then,  all  the  so-called  axioms  of  natural  science 
relate  to  things  and  events  in  so  far  as  they  are  describa- 
ble.  There  is  notoriously  no  axiom  as  to  the  caprices  of 
maidens,  or  as  to  the  wayward  human  heart  generally. 
The  axioms  of  natural  science  are  about  number,  space, 
time,  motion,  force  (in  the  technical  sense  of  the  word), 
—  all  describable  matters.1 

In  the  second  place  our  most  assured  and  universal  ax- 
ioms all  relate  to  matters  of  the  completest  describability. 
I  know  that  all  beings,  if  only  they  can  count,  must  find 
that  three  and  two  make  five.  Perhaps  the  angels  can't 
count ;  but  if  they  can,  this  axiom  is  true  for  them.  If  I 
met  an  angel  who  declared  that  his  experience  had  occa- 
sionally shown  him  a  three  and  a  two  that  did  not  make 
five,  I  should  know  at  once  what  sort  of  an  angel  he  was. 

1  Or  about  matters  assumed  to  be  describable.  A  deeper  study 
than  there  is  here  room  to  undertake  would  show  how  limited  ouf 
actual  powers  of  description  are.  At  the  basis  of  every  description, 
«.  </.,  of  space,  one  finds  a  fundamental  and  irreducible  appreciation. 


PHYSICAL   LAW   AND  FREEDOM.  401 

But  now  why  am  I  so  sure  of  this  ?  Simply  because  my 
description  of  three  and  of  two  is  so  free  from  merely 
appreciative  elements,  because  I  know  so  perfectly  their 
precise  structure,  and  know  that  it  is  their  structure,  and 
is  not  any  part  of  the  appreciative  content  of  the  feelings 
of  the  moment  when  I  count  three  and  two.  My  feelings 
may  be  of  what  you  will,  of  notes  of  music  or  of  chalk- 
marks.  I  count ;  that  is  enough.  The  numbers  as  num- 
bers are  producible  and  reproducible  at  my  pleasure  by  my 
counting,  and  are  not  matters  of  my  feelings.  They  are 
then  indeed  in  my  experience,  but  are  not  of  the  moment. 
Of  geometrical  axioms  there  is  no  time  to  speak  at 
present.  Let  us  pass  immediately  to  more  concrete  in- 
stances. Take  the  ancient  case  of  the  principle  that  "  all 
men  are  mortal."  This  is  confessedly  no  axiom.  It  is  an 
induction  from  experience.  What  is  the  reason  why  we 
are  so  sure  of  it  ?  If  anybody,  e.  g.,  the  angel  aforesaid, 
told  us  that  in  his  experience  there  were  cases  of  men 
who  had  lived  a  hundred  thousand  years,  and  who  ap- 
peared to  him  to  be  essentially  immortal,  what  should  we 
reply?  If  we  thought  already  pretty  highly  of  the  angel 
in  question,  we  might  not  respond  according  to  our  first 
impulse,  but  might  reflect  a  little.  If  we  did  thus  hesi- 
tate, what  axiomatic  answer  to  his  assertion  could  we  very 
soon  suggest  ?  Very  obviously  this :  That  if  this  indeed 
were  so,  then  the  people  that  he  called  men  must  be  in 
some  fashion  of  a  very  different  description  from  the  peo- 
ple to  whom  we  are  accustomed  to  limit  the  name.  That 
answer  would  express  the  scientific  postulate  very  pre- 
cisely. If  any  man  is  a  real  man,  and  not  a  creature  in 
a  dream,  then  he  must  have  some  sort  of  public  and  defi- 
nite description,  capable  of  being  put  into  universal  terms ; 
and  this  description  must  be  such  as  to  follow  him  through 
all  his  fortunes  to  the  end.  The  description  will  be  one 
involving  substances,  and  changes  in  the  relations  of  these 
substances,  the  changes  having  a  definable  type.  If  this 


402  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

definable  type  of  change  is  such  as  to  involve  some  day 
the  death  of  the  man,  —  well  then,  anybody  else  who 
corresponds  to  this  same  description  must  also  be  doomed 
to  death.  That  is  the  whole  story  of  the  universal  mor- 
tality of  man.  That  is  all  that  we  know  about  it,  except 
indeed  in  so  far  as  our  knowledge  of  the  description  of 
the  typical  process  of  heredity  enables  us  to  say  that  the 
offspring  of  men  must  be  describable  as  a  man,  and  must 
•jherefore  be  as  mortal  as  his  fathers. 

To  take  another  illustration  :  the  Paul  of  Acts  xxviii. 
£-Q  gathered  sticks  to  make  a  fire,  and  thereupon  the 
viper  came  out  of  the  heat,  and  stung  him.  The  barba 
rians,  looking  on,  anticipated  his  death,  and  made  appro- 
priate but  rather  narrowly  appreciative  comments.  But 
"  he  shook  off  the  beast  into  the  fire,  and  felt  no  harm." 
So,  kt  after  they  had  looked  a  great  while  and  saw  no 
harm  come  to  him,  they  changed  their  minds,  and  said 
that  he  was  a  god."  The  reasoning,  granted  the  facts  of 
the  narrative,  was  crude,  but  not  extraordinary.  Evi- 
dently these  barbarians  used,  after  their  fashion,  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  uniformity  of  nature.  And  what  was  this 
principle  in  their  eyes  ?  It  was  the  principle  of  the  uni- 
versality and  consequent  permanence  of  descriptions.  A 
man  was  described,  according  to  their  notion,  as  a  being 
who,  amongst  other  general  characters,  possessed  that  of 
swelling  up  and  dropping  down  dead  when  stung  by  a 
viper.  The  description  was  inexact,  but  it  served  for 
lack  of  a  better.  Now  Paul  did  not  do  this.  He  felt  no 
harm.  Well  then,  what  followed  ?  Not  that  one  changed 
one's  description  of  a  man,  but  that  one  looked  for  an- 
other class  with  another  description,  wherein  to  place 
Paul.  Paul's  companions  already  had  in  mind  a  certain 
sub-class  of  men,  described  as  apostles,  who  were,  amongst 
other  general  characteristics,  exempt  from  injury  by  the 
touch  of  "  deadly  things."  To  them,  therefore,  the  classi- 
fication as  "  god  "  was  both  superfluous  and  excluded. 


PHYSICAL   LAW  AND  FREEDOM.  403 

The  real  axiom  is  then,  that  both  things  and  events,  in 
so  far  as  they  are  objective,  have  universal  and  perma- 
nent descriptions,  in  whose  unity  all  that  is  real  concerning 
the  events  is  so  bound  up  that  a  given  grouping  of  char- 
acteristics can  be  predicted  for  any  object  that  corre- 
sponds to  the  given  description.  All  prediction  of  natural 
events  is  therefore  of  necessity  hypothetical.  The  sun 
will  certainly  rise  to-morrow  if  in  this  part  of  the  cosmos 
the  same  bodies  keep  moving  in  the  present  ways ;  and 
this  they  will  do  unless  some  describable  physical  cata- 
strophe (e.  g.)  the  blowing  into  small  fragments  of  the 
earth  from  some  enormous  internal  tension)  takes  place 
before  to-morrow;  and  this  catastrophe,  again,  will  not 
take  place,  unless  describable  physical  changes  are  now 
going  on  in  the  earth  and  in  the  universe  at  large  that  are 
tending  towards  such  an  explosion,  and  tending  in  such 
manner  as  to  lead  to  it  before  to-morrow.  So  one  must 
always  state  one's  predictions.  That  the  same  causes  lead 
to  the  same  effects  means,  when  interpreted  in  exact  me- 
chanical terms,  that  certain  definable  motions,  velocities, 
and  accelerations  of  certain  definite  bodies  are  such, 
that  when  you  describe  them  mathematically  and  exactly, 
you  find  certain  earlier  conditions  of  a  system  of  bodies 
leading  to  and  involving,  as  part  of  the  whole  description, 
certain  later  states.  The  belief  that  there  is  physical 
causation  is  then  the  belief  that  such  mathematically  ex- 
act descriptions  of  the  things  and  events  of  the  world  are 
possible,  whether  we  have  found  them  as  yet  or  not.  And 
the  genuine  foundation  of  this  belief  is  the  observation 
that  only  by  thus  categorizing  and  formalizing  our  experi- 
ence do  we  find  ourselves  able  to  make  its  content  public 
property,  for  our  later  thought,  or  for  our  neighbors.  I 
must  reconstruct  my  experience,  or  it  is  not  publicly  mine, 
is  not  universal,  is  not  impersonal.  And  to  reconstruct  it 
I  must  lay  stress  upon  so  much  of  it  as  exemplifies  forms 
and  categories. 


404  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

One  returns  then,  for  the  sake  of  characterizing  thia 
whole  world  of  description,  to  the  suggestion  that  the 
case  of  the  rainbow  already  brought  before  us  at  the  out- 
set.  My  neighbor  experiences  this  or  that.  Pie  says  that 
this  experience  was  not  his  alone,  but  was  an  experience 
of  universal  truth.  Well  then,  we  say,  tell  us  what  it 
was.  In  so  far  as  he  does  this,  with  exactness,  and  under 
the  conditions  of  scientific  rigidity,  he  describes.  If  he 
describes  successfully,  he  tells  us,  then,  of  definite  and 
permanent  things,  in  space  and  time,  that  behave  in  defi- 
nite and  permanent  ways.  Does  he  fail  of  this  rigidity  of 
description  (as  our  imperfect  science  is  continually  failing, 
in  all  but  its  mathematical  departments),  what  is  our  con- 
clusion ?  It  is  one  that  first  voices  itself  thus :  Then,  as  we 
say,  you  have  not  yet  experienced  enough  of  your  object. 
Go  back  to  it,  and  study  it  and  its  relations  to  other  ob- 
jects until  you  have  reached  mathematical  exactness. 
Does  our  observer  now  reply  :  —  "  But  I  can't  reach  such 
exactness,  with  any  amount  of  study,  because  the  object 
itself  is  n't  exact,  conforms  to  no  laws,  behaves  in  no  per- 
manent way,  is  n't  a  lasting  or  a  definite  object  "  ?  —  Then 
our  final  answer  is :  Ah,  very  well,  if  this  be  so,  your 
object  is  n't  an  object,  but  your  private  feeling.  This 
Gewiihl  von  Erscheinungen  we  have  heard  of  before  from 
Kant.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  the  private  and  personal 
experience,  uncategorized,  incapable  therefore  of  being 
shared  by  anybody  else,  and  therefore  not  objective. 

So  much  then  for  a  sketch  of  the  world  of  description. 
So  much  for  the  gist  of  what  I  take  to  be  the  only  possi- 
ble "deduction  of  the  categories"  of  physical  nature. 
Therefore  is  this  our  physical  world  one  of  rigid  law,  of 
immovable  order,  of  atoms  and  ether  vibrations  and  well- 
conserved  energy.  Therefore,  moreover,  is  it  an  essen 
tially  human  world,  the  world  not  of  the  fully  conscious 
Self  as  such,  in  his  eternal  completeness,  but  of  beings 
who  never  communicate  with  exactness  through  any  de- 
vices but  those  of  abstract  description. 


PHYSICAL  LAW  AND  FREEDOM.          405 

V. 

It  hardly  needs  a  very  elaborate  proof  to  show  that 
this  world  of  description  as  it  has  now  at  length  been  de- 
fined for  us  cannot  be  the  whole  of  the  real  world.  Our 
provisional  assumption  has  indeed  aided  us  thus  far  very 
well.  It  has  defined  for  us  the  world  of  exact  natural 
science,  a  world  of  boundless  intellectual  concern  to  us 
men,  and  surely  a  part  or  at  all  events  an  aspect  of  the 
real  world.  But  our  assumption  has  not  pretended  to  be 
adequate  to  the  account  of  one  sort  of  outer  reality,  in 
which  we  all  believe,  and  which  we  continually  long  to 
know. 

Here  in  my  world  of  daily  experience  is  my  friend. 
In  what  sense  is  he  real  to  me  ?  Very  imperfectly  I  can 
describe  him  —  a  man  of  such  height,  so  or  so  conditioned 
and  habited  as  to  this  space  form,  wherein  I  find  all  the 
things  of  my  world.  Science  teaches  me  to  guess  at  a 
closer  description  of  him.  If  one  saw  him  through  and 
through,  as  with  my  poor  eyes  I  see  him  not,  one  would 
ultimately  experience  as  the  describable  physical  facts 
about  him,  —  a  quivering  mass  of  molecules.  I  need  not 
go  further  as  to  the  constitution  of  these  molecules. 
Enough,  they  would  be  flying  about  together,  a  swarm  of 
trillions  upon  trillions,  —  restless  with  the  pent-up  energy 
of  their  unstable  mutual  positions,  and  with  the  live 
energy  of  their  swift  and  ceaseless  flight.  Multitudes  of 
them  would  be  perpetually  leaving,  at  every  breath  he 
draws,  the  form  that  I  call  his.  Multitudes  of  new  ones 
would  take  the  place  of  what  he  had  lost.  Especially 
complex  with  intertwined  spirals  and  streams  of  multitu- 
dinous molecules  would  be  each  of  the  many  tens  of  mil- 
lions of  cells  of  his  brain.  In  this  "  system  of  systems," 
like  the  astronomer  in  the  boundless  heavens,  I  the  ob- 
server, were  I  acute  enough  to  witness  all  this,  would  be 
lost.  Thus  my  friend,  however,  might  be  found,  as  a  fact 


406  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

in  space  and  time,  public  before  all  men  and  angels  in  so 
far  as  they  too  were  able  to  view  him.  Thus  he  might 
be  found  ?  Nay,  I  have  as  yet  found  him  not  at  all. 
I  did  not  mean  this  maze  of  molecules  by  my  friend.  I 
meant  his  intelligence,  which  he  more  or  less  transmits  to 
me  through  his  own  descriptive  gestures  and  speech, — 
this  and  his  appreciations  themselves,  which,  as  I  have  all 
along  been  saying,  are  his,  and  his  alone,  purely  private 
facts  of  his  inner  life,  but  which,  after  all,  I  value  most 
about  him.  His  ideals,  which  I  so  admire,  his  will,  which 
is  often  so  much  wiser  than  mine,  his  approval,  which  I 
prize  so  highly,  —  where  are  all  these  ?  Are  they  for  me 
facts  in  my  world  ?  Yes,  for  I  mean  to  speak  of  them. 
I  think  about  them,  and  either  they  are  real  as  I  think 
them  to  be,  or  else,  if  I  am  in  error,  the  true  Self,  who 
knows  all  things,  is  aware  of  what  place  in  the  true  and 
absolute  order  the  genuine  object  of  my  thoughts  occu- 
pies, and  knows  what  facts  really  constitute  that  to  me  in- 
accessible object.  Facts  they  are  for  me  ;  and  they  are 
not  facts  within  me  ;  nor  yet  are  they  describable  facts  in 
my  space  and  in  my  time.  The  forms  of  my  world  con- 
tain them  nowhere.  The  categories  of  my  understanding 
cannot  be  impressed  upon  them.  And  yet  they  are  real. 
They  are  in  truth  amongst  the  most  vitally  real  objects  of 
my  faith,  of  my  thinking,  and  of  my  will. 

What  sort  of  reality  then  is  this?  Is  it  not  a  most 
familiar  kind  of  reality,  in  which  our  human  social  con- 
sciousness is  absolutely  bound  up,  without  constant  refer- 
ence to  which  we  speak  hardly  a  waking  word  ?  And  yet 
is  it  not  a  reality  that  as  such  absolutely  transcends  our 
private  consciousness,  and  absolutely  defies  our  powers  of 
physical  description  ? 

And  still  all  along,  even  in  trying  so  resolutely  to  con. 
fine  the  objective  consciousness  to  the  consciousness  of 
whatever  is  describable,  were  we  not  meanwhile  recogniz* 
ing  and  appealing  to  this  objective  other  consciousness  of 


PHYSICAL   LAW   AND   FREEDOM.  4(ty 

our  fellows  ?  Yes,  we  were ;  for  we  were  speaking  of  what 
truth  we  could  describe,  and  so  share  with  the  beings  who 
possess  this  other  consciousness.  What  we  pretended  to 
share,  however,  with  them,  was  some  abstraction  or  other, 
which  in  their  experience  we  hoped  that  they  could  also 
realize.  Their  experience  as  such  we  never  hoped  to  share. 
That  was  private,  inner,  incommunicable.  What  we 
could  describe  would  be  real  for  them  only  in  case  they 
too  could  experience  what  they  could  then  abstractly 
describe  in  the  same  forms  as  those  used  by  us.  What 
was  shared  was  then  never  consciousness,  but  only  the 
imitative  abstract  and  epitome  of  it,  rendered  cold  and 
unappreciative,  in  order  that  it  might  the  better  be  trans- 
ferred, through  word  and  gesture,  from  our  appreciative 
inner  life  to  their  foreign  but  equally  warm  and  glowing 
world  of  feeling.  Yet  all  along  they  were  real  for  us  and 
for  one  another.  Their  monad-like  privacy,  their  window- 
less  isolation  of  momentary  consciousness,  —  we  acknow- 
ledged its  existence,  and  we  pretended  to  intrude  upon  it 
with  our  descriptions  of  our  own  space  and  time  world, 
descriptions  which  we  asked  them  to  verify.  What  could 
we  be  meaning  by  all  this  ? 

Our  answer,  as  idealists,  is  already  fully  prepared  and 
indicated.  The  reality  that  I  attribute  to  my  friend,  the 
genuine  external  existence  that  (even  while  we  defined  the 
outer  order  as  that  which  could  be  experienced  and  de- 
scribed) we  all  the  while  had  to  attribute  to  the  appre- 
ciations of  our  fellows  (which  we  can  never,  in  our  finite 
capacity,  either  experience  or  describe),  —  all  this  is  unin- 
telligible except  in  so  far  as  one  recognizes  that  we  seem- 
ingly isolated  and  momentary  beings  do  share  in  the 
organic  life  of  the  one  Self.  I  mean  my  friend's  inner 
life  when  I  am  fond  of  him.  And  yet  my  friend's  inner 
life  is  not  one  of  my  finite  experiences  at  all ;  nor  can  it 
ever  become  so,  however  much  I  peer  about  for  his  mind 
ia  all  my  own  world  of  space  and  of  time;  nor  can  1 


408  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

describe  how  it  must  seem  to  all  beholders,  as  I  describe 
the  things  of  nature.  What  do  I  mean  by  him,  then? 
Anything  definite  ?  Yes,  a  most  definite,  although  not 
a  physical  fact.  I  mean  a  fact  in  the  same  conscious 
spiritual  realm  with  me,  a  fact  whose  relation  to  me,  as 
the  true  object  of  my  thought,  only  the  inclusive  Self, 
in  whose  thought,  for  whose  reflection,  both  my  friend 
and  I  exist,  —  only  he  can  know,  and  knowing  can  con- 
stitute. 

Neither  my  friend's  inner  life,  nor  the  human  lives  all 
about  me  whose  experience  I  try  to  re-word  in  abstractly 
universal  terms  in  my  descriptive  science,  are  themselves 
describable  objects.  They  are,  nevertheless,  real ;  and  so 
there  is  a  sense  in  which,  despite  my  limitations,  I  know 
myself  as  in  a  world  of  appreciation,  a  world  whose  facts 
are  hard  and  fast,  are  beyond  my  private  life,  cannot  be 
expressed  in  terms  of  my  space  and  time,  and  yet  must 
be  present  and  united  in  the  organic  universality  of  the 
one  Self.  And  I  presupposed  this  world  at  every  step, 
even  while  I  spoke  provisionally  as  if  the  objective  and 
the  describable  were  one  and  the  same.  The  communion 
of  spirits,  then,  is  genuine,  although  we  have  no  con- 
sciousness of  a  spiritual  mind-reading  of  other  finite 
beings.  Our  relations  with  the  universe  are  essentially 
social  The  world  of  description  itself  but  expresses,  in 
so  far  as  it  is  the  truth,  one  aspect  of  this  fact  of  our 
spiritual  intercourse.  Because  we  can  communicate  with 
each  other,  therefore  we  can  so  far  identify  our  descrip- 
tive accounts  of  our  various  inner  experiences  as  to  know 
that  we  have  truth  in  common.  But  we  could  not  even 
mean  to  communicate  with  each  other,  did  we  not  presup- 
pose, as  an  objective  fact,  such  organic  spiritual  relations 
as  cannot  possibly  be  expressed  in  any  physical  terms,  but 
only  in  terms  of  the  assertion  that  all  the  spirits  are  truly 
together  in  one  Spirit. 


PHYSICAL  LAW  AND  FREEDOM.  409 

VI. 

The  facts  of  the  world  of  appreciation  have  already 
forced  us  to  alter  in  one  respect  our  definition  of  the 
nature  of  this  world.  At  the  outset  it  was  for  us  the 
world  of  essentially  private  appreciations,  that  is,  of  what 
we  called  feelings.  In  so  far  as  we  regard  ourselves  as 
beings  bounded  in  time  and  space,  the  appreciative  facts 
do  indeed  still  retain  this  private  and  inner  nature.  But 
what  we  have  now  further  found  is  the  truth  that  the  facts 
of  this  universe  of  appreciative  feelings  are  not  as  iso- 
lated as  at  the  outset  they  seemed  to  be,  or  as,  in  the 
world  of  space  and  of  time,  they  must  still  seem.  My 
friend  yonder  is,  as  fact  of  space  and  time,  real  to  me 
only  in  so  far  as  his  inner  life  is  foreign.  But  in  so  far 
as  I  truly  communicate  with  him,  we  are  members  of  the 
same  world  of  appreciation ;  and  in  this  sense  he  is  real 
to  me  by  virtue  of  our  organic  unity  in  the  one  Self. 
This  organic  unity,  whereby  the  monads  of  the  spiritual 
world  cease  to  be  merely  monads,  has  already  introduced 
that  form  of  universality  into  the  world  of  the  apprecia- 
tions which  we  have  just  recognized.  This  world  is  one 
whose  parts  never  become  public  property  for  one  another, 
in  so  far  as  you  observe  them  from  without.  Their  ties 
are  of  another  sort.  They  are  "  windowless  "  (as  Leibnitz 
said  of  the  Monads  that  in  his  doctrine  made  up  the  uni- 
verse of  finite  beings)  ;  but  they  are  windowless  only  to 
one  another's  finite  view  in  the  world  of  space  and  time 
relations.  From  above  they  are  open  to  the  light  of  the 
reflective  Self,  in  whom  they  live  and  move  and  have  their 
being.  It  is  with  their  relations  as  it  is  already  imthin 
our  own  finite  lives,  in  so  far  as  we  are  individual  bits  of 
the  Self.  For  the  moments  of  our  lives  are  all  separate 
in  time,  —  isolated  as  the  various  finite  selves  are,  yet 
in  reflection  we  commune  within  ourselves,  and  catch  in 
one  moment  the  meaning  of  a  thought  that  was  only  hall 


410  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

articulate  in  another  ;  or  correct,  or  otherwise  review  and 
reword  the  ideas  that,  left  solely  to  time,  would  seem  to 
be  lost  and  dead  forever.  However  small  a  bit  of  a  self 
I  am,  I  already,  then,  possess  something  of  the  inclusive 
transcendency  of  the  true  Self,  for  I  "  look  before  and 
after,"  and  join  in  my  one  consciousness  more  of  time 
than  the  mathematical  instant  would  possess.  And  as  the 
moments  of  my  finite  thought  are  to  me  when  I  reflect 
upon  my  own  meaning,  and  upon  the  relations  of  many 
moments  of  my  life,  so  my  neighbors  and  I  are  to  tha 
larger  Self  when,  discoursing  together  about  the  same 
objects,  we  find  ourselves  as  it  were  but  moments  in  his 
inclusive  unity. 

The  world  of  appreciation  is,  then,  one  of  a  sort  of 
reflective  "  publicity  "  and  interconnectedness  ;  and  such 
an  interconnection  and  publicity  is,  as  we  have  seen,  tha 
very  presupposition  of  the  existence  of  any  genuine  truth 
in  the  world  of  description.  If  I  cannot  really  communi- 
cate with  my  neighbor,  and  think  of  meanings  that  ara 
like  his,  there  is  no  truth  in  any  of  our  descriptions. 
Without  the  multitude  of  genuinely  interrelated  expe- 
riences, no  true  similarities,  no  describable  universality 
of  experience  ;  without  the  facts  of  appreciation,  no  laws 
of  description ;  without  the  cloud  of  witnesses,  no  ab- 
stract and  epitome  of  the  common  truth  to  which  they 
can  bear  witness.  Destroy  the  organic  and  appreciable 
unity  of  the  world  of  appreciative  beings,  and  the  de- 
scribable objects  all  vanish;  atoms,  brains,  "suns  and 
milky  ways "  are  naught.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you 
destroy  our  describing  kind  of  intercommunication,  you 
can  at  least  conceive  of  beings,  as  we  did  before,  whose 
communications  were  of  a  direct  and  appreciative  sort,  as 
those  of  mother  bird  and  nestlings  now  often  seem  to  be 
as  we  look  at  them.  The  world  of  science,  then,  presup- 
poses the  world  of  spiritual  oneness ;  the  unity  of  the 
Self  is  through  and  through  His  Own,  and  is  in  so  fax 
appreciative. 


PHYSICAL  LAW  AND   FREEDOM.  411 

Nor  are  all  appreciations  dumb.  The  whole  Moral 
World  presupposes  a  shaving  of  definite  and  express  ap- 
preciations amongst  moral  beings,1  a  "  realization  "  of  the 
life  of  one  by  another.  Describable  phenomena  may  aid 
this  mutual  realization,  but  can  never  assure  it ;  and  only 
when  it  is  assured  does  the  moral  life  begin.  What  Kant 
called  the  Practical  Reason,  the  moral  nature  of  man,  is 
through  and  through  appreciative,  but  it  is  not  on  that 
account  merely  emotional.  It  is  like  the  true  Self,  thor- 
oughly and  reflectively  rational.  The  moral  law  itself  is 
in  no  physical  sense  an  outer  reality.  You  cannot  describe 
its  facts  as  you  can  those  of  gravitation,  by  looking  on 
and  computing ;  but  none  the  less  is  the  moral  law  a 
truth,  —  a  truth,  namely,  of  the  universal  appreciation  of 
the  world  of  finite  ideals  and  strivings,  all  of  them  inner 
facts,  but,  in  their  totality,  an  universe  of  genuine  objec- 
tivity. The  world  of  appreciation  is,  then,  the  deeper 
reality.  Its  rival,  the  world  of  description,  is  the  result 
of  an  essentially  human  and  finite  outlook. 

Not  on  that  account,  however,  is  the  latter  unreal.  It 
is  simply  the  way  in  which  the  world  of  appreciation,  the 
world  of  the  true  and  spiritual  Self,  must  needs  appear 
when  viewed  by  a  finite  being  ivhose  consciousness  expe- 
riences in  the  forms  of  our  space  and  of  our  time,  and 
who  is  interested  in  giving  to  his  fellows  a  dispassionate 
and  universalized  account  of  how  he  views  it.  Here  is 
the  permanent  truth  of  Kant's  doctrine. 

But  now,  ere  we  pass  to  a  closer  study  of  the  relations 
of  these  two  aspects  of  reality,  shall  we  not  restate  the 
modified  view  that  we  have  gained  of  the  nature  of  the 
world  of  appreciation  ?  As  we  now  view  it,  it  is  the  world 
whose  categories  are  not  those  of  abstractly  formal  de- 
scription, but  are  not  the  less  true  categories.  They  are 
the  Categories  of  Self -Consciousness  as  such.  When  one 

1  See  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  chap  vi. :  The  Moral  In* 
tight,  p.  131  sqq. 


412  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

is  describing  an  object  of  physical  science,  he  is  so  much 
concerned  with  the  structure  of  this  object,  that  it  is  his 
business  to  forget,  as  we  say,  himself,  and  to  live  solely 
in  the  process  of  constructive  imitation  whereby  he  seizes 
upon  what  is  enduring  about  this  object.  When  he  appre- 
ciates, he  says,  on  the  contrary :  So  this  thing  is  for  me. 
Hence  it  was  that,  at  the  outset,  appreciation  appeared  to 
us  a  sort  of  private  exercise  of  each  self-consciousness.  It 
was,  as  we  first  found  it,  a  sort  of  speaking  with  tongues, 
whereby  each  little  bit  of  a  self  edified  himself,  but  not 
the  brethren.  Now,  however,  we  have  learned  a  more 
excellent  way.  The  truly  objective  and  universal  appre- 
ciation is  like  the  Pauline  charity.  It  is  none  the  less 
self-conscious  because  it  seeketh  not  its  own,  and  rejoiceth 
rather  in  the  truth.  It  stands  for  the  unity  of  self-con- 
sciousness of  the  one  Spirit,  whom  all  finite  things  and 
experiences  presuppose.  His  appreciations  are  indeed  his 
own  ;  for  he  is  alone  and  none  beside  him.  Yet  in  them 
we  all  share,  for  that  fact  is  what  binds  us  together. 

Categories  the  universal  appreciation  has,  and  what  are 
they  ?  They  are  the  categories  of  the  self-conscious  and 
of  the  significant  world,  the  categories  of  the  realm  of 
inter-related  interests,  and  of  the  mutual  dependence  of 
each  finite  consciousness  upon  others  for  its  own  truth 
and  meaning.  In  this  realm  it  is,  too,  that  thoughts  have 
objects  beyond  them  and  true  relations  to  these  objects. 
Here,  also,  the  categories  of  objective  worth  and  of  pur- 
pose have  validity  ;  for  it  is  self-consciousness  that  gives 
worth  to  things,  and  that  reflectively  compares  the  worth 
of  things  seen  from  one  point  of  view  with  their  worth  as 
estimated  otherwise.  The  world  of  appreciations  is,  then, 
the  world  of  ideals.  In  space  and  in  time  you  find  no 
such  things  as  worth  and  ideals ;  there  you  find  only  hard 
facts.  The  consciousness  of  us  finite  beings  who  know 
and  judge  the  things  of  space  and  time  is  the  source  of 
the  transient  worth  which  appears  to  us  here  or  there  ill 


PHYSICAL  LAW   AND   FREEDOM.  413 

our  world.  Only  the  eternal  consciousness,  in  its  time- 
transceiiding  completeness,  can  know  the  really  abiding 
and  eternally  true  value  of  the  world. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  specific  categories  of  the  world 
of  description  have  no  application  to  this  world  of  appre- 
ciation, in  so  far  as  it  is  regarded  in  itself.  It  is  real,  but 
there  is  no  physical  necessity  in  it,  no  natural  causation 
links  together  its  parts ;  and  we  know  this,  at  present, 
because  we  have  found  what  is  the  nature  of  physical 
necessity  and  of  natural  causation.  In  so  far  as  two 
finite  beings,  A  and  B,  separated  in  space  and  time,  are 
to  communicate  with  each  other  by  abstract  rewording  of 
experience,  they  must  find  present  in  the  experience 
of  each  of  them  a  world  of  facts  that  submit  to  the  cate- 
gories of  science ;  and  of  these  one  is  that  of  physical 
necessity.  But  in  so  far  as  A  considers  what  he  means  by 
the  inner  existence  of  B,  he  finds  here  a  fact,  to  wit,  an- 
other self-consciousness,  recognized  by  him  as  real.  This 
fact,  however,  is  one  that  he  cannot  describe.  He  can 
describe  the  outward  seeming  of  B,  but  never  the  inner 
appreciations  of  B  as  such.  It  is  useless  to  say,  therefore, 
that  the  category  of  physical  causation  applies  to  the  true 
relations  of  B  and  A.  A's  body,  indeed,  by  virtue  of  its 
changes,  causes  changes  in  the  body  of  B.  So  far  physi- 
cal causation  reigns  supreme  ;  but  A's  body  and  B's  body 
are  describable  phenomena  in  the  world  of  space  and  time, 
and  only  describable  phenomena  have  physical  relations. 
A  and  B,  however,  are  in  their  actual  and  appreciable 
relations  by  virtue  of  the  part  they  both  play  in  the  inner 
self-consciousness  of  the  organic  and  inclusive  Self,  who, 
being  what  he  is,  embodies  his  personality  in  numerous 
finite  bits  of  selfhood,  whereof  A  and  B  are  examples. 
In  him  they  are  together,  in  so  far  as  each  of  them  thinks 
of  the  other.  Another  person  of  whom  I  think  is,  as 
such,  not  the  cause,  but  the  appreciable  object  of  my 
thoughts.  Where  real  things  are  in  this  relation,  they 


414  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

are  not  in  the  describable  relation  called  that  of  cause 
and  effect.  The  spiritual  world,  as  such,  then,  causes  in 
me  no  thoughts.  I  think  of  it  thus  or  thus  by  virtue  of 
my  place  in  its  organic  wholeness.  The  more  of  a  self  I 
am,  the  more  and  the  deeper  do  I  know  its  truth.  And 
as  a  whole  the  world  of  the  self  is  caused  by  nothing,  is 
what  it  is  by  virtue  of  its  own  self-knowledge,  is  consti- 
tuted by  the  reflective  self-consciousness  in  and  for  which 
it  has  its  own  being.  It  is,  then,  through  and  through,  a 
world  of  Freedom  ;  its  own  significance  is  what  occasions 
it  thus  to  express  itself.  Nothing  causes  or  explains  it 
from  without.  It  is  its  own  excuse  for  being. 

As  for  the  proof  of  all  this,  I  can  now  only  refer  you 
again  to  the  argument  as  to  the  nature  of  objective  truth, 
and  as  to  our  relation  thereto,  that  I  so  imperfectly  set 
forth  at  the  last  time.  Just  this  problematic  but  real 
relation  of  a  thought  to  its  object  is  the  one  implied  in 
every  least  assertion  of  our  lives.  It  is  not  true  that  we 
believe  in  outer  objects  because  we  suppose  somehow,  a 
priori,  that  our  inner  experiences  must  have  adequate 
causes,  and  then  make  hypotheses  as  to  the  nature  of 
these  causes.  On  the  contrary,  unless  I  first  believed  in 
outer  objects,  and  in  the  validity  of  my  thoughts  about 
them,  I  should  never  talk  of  laws  and  of  causes  at  all.1 
The  objects  of  my  thought  are  not  the  producers  of  my 
thought,  but  the  truths  that  correspond  thereto.  A  cup 
of  coffee  may,  as  I  say,  "  set  me  thinking,"  that  is,  may 
increase  the  activity  of  my  nerve-centres;  but  what  I 
think  of  may,  then,  be,  not  the  coffee,  but  the  feelings  of 
my  fellow-men,  or  the  nature  of  things,  or  the  prepara- 
tion of  this  lecture.  The  relation  of  object  to  thought 
is  here,  you  see,  not  a  physical,  but  a  logically  appreciable 
one,  —  one  that  only  my  relation  to  the  inclusive  Logos 
can  explain  or  express.  And  this  case  is  typical.  Rela- 

1  A  fuller  exposition  of  these  consider  at  ions  will  be  found  in  the 
Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  354-360. 


PHYSICAL   LAW  AND   FREEDOM.  415 

tions  of  causation,  however,  exist  amongst  certain  objects 
of  thought,  in  a  certain  aspect  of  their  nature.  Is  an 
object,  namely,  to  be  regarded  by  me  in  so  far  forth  as  it 
is  abstractly  describable,  then,  and  only  then,  does  it  stand 
in  causal  relations  to  other  objects.  As  for  causes  that 
affect  me  personally,  these  do  so,  once  more,  only  in  so  far 
as  I,  too,  am  conceived,  not  in  my  inner  and  appreciable 
nature,  but  as  myself  capable  of  being  looked  upon  and 
described  from  without,  that  is,  as  myself  an  object 
amongst  objects,  existent  in  space  and  time,  and  public  to 
all  men.  "  The  coffee  sets  me  thinking :  "  this  expression 
refers  to  the  physical  fact  of  the  essentially  describable 
relation  of  a  certain  alkaloid  to  the  physiological  changes 
that  its  presence  in  my  blood  produces  in  my  nerve  cen- 
tres. Of  this  describable  change  in  me  as  phenomenal 
thing  my  own  inner  life,  after  I  drink  coffee,  is  the  appre- 
ciable aspect. 

VII. 

Our  last  word,  "aspect,"  suggests  to  us  at  once  how 
near  in  one  way  we  have  now  come  to  the  language  of  the 
so-called  "  Monism "  of  recent  times.1  In  fact,  unsatis- 
factory as  the  "  mind-stuff  "  theory  seems  to  an  idealist  in 
the  ordinary  formulation  of  this  theory,  he  has  only  to 
substitute  his  own  interpretation  of  the  fundamental  truth 
of  things  for  certain  of  the  statements  of  Clifford  and 
of  the  other  Monists,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  "  Double 
Aspect  "  becomes  at  once  luminous  and  inevitable.  We 
shall  aid  ourselves  greatly  if  we  interpret  the  theory  now 
in  our  hands  by  the  aid  of  this  monistic  formula.  In  doing 
so  we  shall  again  survey,  but  from  a  new  outlook,  our 
whole  argument. 

The  true  world  is,  to  state  our  theory  afresh,  the  system 

of  the  thoughts  of  the  Logos.    His  unity,  as  we  have  seen, 

is  a  reflective,  a  self-conscious,  and  so  an  appreciable,  but 

not,  in  its  deepest  truth,  a  describable  unity.     We  know 

1  See  above,  Lecture  IX.,  pp.  300-304. 


416  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODEKN  PHILOSOPHY. 

this  unity  just  in  so  far  forth  as  we  ourselves  consciously 
and  rationally  enter  into  it  and  form  part  of  it.  There- 
fore,  in  so  far  as  we  have  inner  unity  of  thinking,  in  SG 
far  as  we  commune  with  our  fellows,  and  in  so  far  as  we 
rightly  see  significance  in  the  outer  universe,  we  are  in 
and  of  the  world  of  appreciation  that  embodies  the 
thought  of  the  Logos. 

On  the  other  hand,  once  having  recognized  ourselves  as 
finite  beings,  distinct  from  our  fellows  in  so  far  as  we  are 
different  centres  of  appreciative  consciousness,  and  sun- 
dered from  them  in  so  far  as  we  are  all  only  bits  of  the 
true  Self,  we  become  aware  of  our  private  world  of  inner 
truth  as  distinguishable  from  the  truth  as  experienced  by 
other  men,  and  from  the  universal  truth  of  the  all-know- 
ing world-consciousness.  A  new  question  then  arises :  — 
How  muck  of  this  private  truth  of  ours  is  a  revelation 
to  us  in  our  finitude  of  what  other  finite  selves  can  also 
know  ?  Then  comes  the  answer :  So  much  as  can  be  de- 
scribed to  these  other  finite  selves  and  then,  in  their  ex- 
perience, appreciatively  verified,  may  be  regarded  as  not 
our  private  content,  but  as  universal.  Herewith  began  a 
little  while  ago  our  effort  to  describe  the  content  of  our 
experience.  Using  the  space  and  time  forms,  and  the  cate- 
gories of  theoretical  science,  we  get,  as  the  result  of  a  long- 
continued  common  effort  of  humanity  at  describing  things, 
the  world  of  science.  But  again  the  question  returns 
Upon  us,  In  what  sense  is  this  world  of  description  real  ? 
The  only  answer  is,  It  is  real  in  so  far  as  it  is  in  very 
truth  an  aspect  of  the  world  of  the  Logos,  such  an  aspect, 
namely,  as  can  be  expressed  by  finite  consciousness  in 
terms  of  the  space  and  time  forms,  and  of  the  categories 
of  empirical  science.  Only  as  such  an  aspect  has  the 
physical  world  a  reality.  Consequently  all  its  laws,  all 
its  necessity,  its  causation,  its  uniformity,  belong,  not  to 
its  inner  nature  as  such,  but  to  the  external  show  of  this 
nature.  If  we  could  grasp  the  whole  truth  at  a  glance, 


PHYSICAL  LAW  AND  FBEEDOM.          417 

as  the  Logos  does,  we  should  see  what  now  is  dark  to  us, 
namely,  why  and  how  the  world  of  appreciation,  when 
viewed  under  the  conditions  of  our  finite  experience,  has 
thus  to  seem  a  world  of  matter  in  motion.  As  it  is,  how- 
ever, we  already  know  that  the  world  of  matter  in  motion 
is  simply  an  external  aspect  of  the  true  and  appreciable 
world.  That  is,  in  substance,  the  whole  of  our  philosophi- 
cal insight  into  the  matter.  Therefore  it  is  perfectly  true 
to  say  that  my  friend's  brain,  with  its  countless  molecules, 
is  simply  the  outward  aspect  of  my  friend's  inaccessible 
inner  life,  in  so  far  as  this  life  is  expressed,  symbolized, 
translated,  into  the  language  of  my  personal  experience 
of  time  and  space  phenomena.  My  friend,  as  he  is  in  him- 
self, is  therefore  not  a  new  sort  of  thing,  called  a  soul  or 
mind,  existent  somewhere  yonder  in  space,  in  amongst  his 
brain  molecules,  —  a  thing  imprisoned  in  his  body.  No, 
he  is  himself  the  reality  that,  when  I  look  at  his  body,  I 
am  vainly  trying  to  see  and  describe.  What  I  see  and 
describe  is  simply  the  physical,  the  phenomenal  aspect  of 
his  inner  and  appreciative  life.  That  he  does  appear  at 
all  in  my  world  of  phenomena  is  due  to  the  fact,  not  fur- 
ther explicable  from  the  human  point  of  view,  that  he  and 
I,  by  virtue  of  our  places  in  the  world-order,  have  spirit- 
ual relations,  think  of  each  other,  and  do  somehow  indi- 
rectly commune  together.  That  this  relation  of  his  inner 
life  to  me  is  symbolized  by  the  describable  facts  of  his 
physical  organism,  is  due  in  general  to  my  nature  as  a 
being  who  can  perceive  and  describe  only  what  appears 
to  me  in  space  and  in  time.  That  just  this  particular  set 
of  facts,  however,  should  symbolize  to  me  his  inaccessible 
inner  life,  is  once  more,  for  us  human  beings,  an  ultimate 
datum.  The  Logos  knows,  not  we,  why  inner  feelings, 
outwardly  symbolized  in  space  and  time  to  our  percep- 
tions, should  appear  as  nerve-centres  made  up  of  countless 
flying  molecules.  The  twofold  aspect  itself  is,  however, 
a  certain  truth  of  our  experience.  There  is  my  friend. 


418  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

He  is  for  himself  conscious,  i.  e.,  appreciative.  The  only 
aspect  of  this  appreciative  life  that  can  become  manifest 
to  me  actually  appears  to  me  as  matter  in  motion.  And 
this  is  describable.  Herewith  we  have  however  only  the 
fact  of  the  double  aspect.  The  inner  intelligibility  of 
this  fact  is  regarded  by  us  as  something  that  must  be  un- 
derstood by  the  Logos.  It  is  for  us  a  problem  ;  but  is 
not  so  for  our  true  Self,  who  completes  the  insight  that 
for  us  is  so  fragmentary. 

Our  theory,  then,  does  not  declare,  as  do  other  forms  of 
the  double  aspect  theory,  that  there  is  a  curious  kind  of 
substance  in  the  world,  a  substance  mysterious  and  essen- 
tially inscrutable,  that  has  the  two  aspects,  the  mental 
and  the  physical.  For  our  theory  undertakes  to  know 
what  this  substance  is.  It  is  the  conscious  life  of  the 
Logos,  whereof  my  friend  is  a  finite  instance,  and  whereby 
I  too  am  so  conceived  as  to  be  in  appreciable  relations  to 
him.  Nor  yet  do  we  say,  as  the  mind-stuff  theory  says, 
that  my  friend  is  a  mass  of  mind-stuff  atoms,  which  pro- 
duce effects  upon  my  mass  of  mind-stuff  atoms.  On  the 
contrary,  for  our  theory,  my  true  friend  stands  in  relations 
to  me  that  are  essentially  appreciable,  not  physical  at  all. 
He  causes  no  effects  in  me  whatever.  His  body  affects 
my  body ;  but  that  is  an  affair  of  physics,  not  of  inner  life. 
I  am  genuinely  related  to  him  in  so  far  only  as  the  insight 
of  the  Logos  reflectively  so  constitutes  our  mutual  concern 
for  each  other  that,  as  a  fact,  it  is  what  it  is.  My  friend 
then  is  no  cause  in  the  world  of  physical  phenomena,  at 
all.  He  is  neither  matter  nor  energy.  His  thoughts 
move  no  molecules.  His  feelings  towards  me  innervate 
no  muscles,  set  in  motion  no  bodily  limbs,  release  no  phy- 
sical energy.  But  his  organism,  as  it  appears  in  space  and 
time,  is  the  describable  show  and  symbol  of  the  inner  and 
appreciable  reality  that  is  his  ;  and,  even  so,  the  physical 
effects  that  his  organism  produces  upon  mine  are  merely 
•the  describable  show  of  our  spiritual  and  appreciable  inter* 


PHYSICAL   LAW   AND   FREEDOM.  419 

relationships.  His  matter  and  energy,  his  nervous  tre- 
mors and  his  innervated  muscles,  his  deeds  and  their  phy- 
sical effects  are  the  phenomenal  aspect  of  his  part  of  the 
world-order.  His  mind  does  not  influence  his  body.  His 
body  is  merely  a  very  imperfect  translation  of  his  mind 
into  the  describable  language  of  space.  The  physical 
causation  that  I  attribute  to  him  should  be  attributed, 
therefore,  solely  to  this  body.  For  all  physical  causation 
is  only  the  describable  translation  of  the  inner  meaning  of 
things  into  terms  of  relations  amongst  bodies.  The  rela- 
tions of  the  world  of  appreciation,  which  is  the  true  world, 
to  the  world  of  description,  which  is  its  show,  are  there- 
fore themselves  in  no  wise  relations  of  cause  and  effect. 
I  as  observer,  interpreting  the  true  world  in  terms  of  our 
human  forms  and  the  categories  of  theoretical  science,  am 
bound  to  see,  in  the  world  as  thus  interpreted,  rigid  laws 
of  causation.  But  the  laws  thus  seen  are  symbols  of 
deeper  truth,  and  not  the  physical  effects  of  this  truth. 
This  deeper  truth  itself  is  not  causal.  It  is  only  such 
truth  as,  in  order  to  be  describable,  must  show  the  aspect 
that  the  laws  of  causal  connection  in  our  experience  inter- 
pret in  their  own  imperfect  way. 

VIII. 

Three  further  and  closing  considerations  occur  to  us,  in 
this  connection,  as  giving  fuller  expression  to  our  form 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  "double  aspect."  The  first  of 
these  is  suggested  by  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  the 
inorganic  world  to  our  human  consciousness.  The  second 
is  suggested  by  the  problem  of  the  real  nature  of  physical 
evolution.  The  third  has  to  do  with  the  problem  of  the 
freedom  of  the  will. 

The  theory  of  the  "double  aspect,"  applied  to  the  facts 
of  the  inorganic  world,  suggests  at  once  that  they,  too,  in 
BO  far  as  they  are  real,  must  possess  their  own  inner  and 
appreciable  aspect.  Upon  this  suggestion  we  have  no 


420  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

time  to  dwell  at  great  length.     In  general  it  is  an  obvious 
corollary  of  all  that  we  have  been  saying. 

When  I  think  of  the  stars  and  of  matter,  of  space  and 
of  the  energy  that  appears  forever  to  be  dissipating  itself 
therein,  I  think  of  something  real,  or  else  of  merely  a  pri- 
vate experience  of  mine.  If,  now,  the  common  experience 
of  humanity  is  our  sufficient  warrant  for  assuming  some 
universal  reality  as  actually  embodied  in  these  hot  stars 
and  cold  interspaces,  of  what  sort  must  this  reality  be  ? 
In  and  for  itself,  we  now  answer,  it  must  be  an  appre- 
ciable reality,  the  expression  of  what,  in  Schopenhauer's 
sense  of  the  word,  may  be  called  a  World- Will ;  as  well 
as  of  what,  in  Hegel's  sense,  may  be  called  an  Universal 
Self-Conscious  Thought.  But  to  say  this  is  not  to  commit 
ourselves  to  the  acceptance  of  those  paradoxes  of  the  seem- 
ing  outer  order  which  we  set  forth  in  our  tenth  lecture. 
These  paradoxes  were  due  to  the  assumption  of  infinite 
space  and  time  as  themselves  outer  and  real,  and  to  their 
introduction  into  our  account  of  the  physical  processes  of 
the  stellar  world.  We  now  have  reached  a  deeper  insight. 
The  "  antinomies  "  of  the  physical  order  no  longer  terrify 
us.  They  are  due  to  our  trying  to  express  the  whole 
appreciable  system  of  things  in  our  human  forms  of  space 
and  time.  Here  before  us  is  the  order  of  the  embodied 
Logos.  We  try  to  describe  it.  Our  science  undertakes 
the  task  ;  our  highest  descriptive  synthesis  encounters  in- 
congruities. What  do  these  mean  ?  They  mean  simply 
that  our  descriptive  science  is,  indeed,  in  one  aspect  of  its 
work,  playing  with  "  pebbles  on  the  beach."  For  the 
fashion  of  this  world  of  space  and  time  is  such  as  to 
give  us  no  united  and  intelligible  definition  of  the  world- 
process  in  its  wholeness.  Only  the  self-completed  is  in- 
telligible ;  and  our  physical  world  in  endless  time  and 
in  infinite  space,  being  no  world  of  self-completed,  that  is, 
of  "  cyclical  "  processes,  is  a  mere  aspect  of  the  true  world, 
is  also  an  aspect  that  must  be  but  fragmentary, 


PHYSICAL   LAW  AND   FREEDOM.  421 

Higher  beings  than  we  may  have  other  forms  of  descrip- 
tive science,  based  upon  a  consciousness,  say,  of  some  other 
form  of  space  and  time,  e.  </.,  of  a  "  non- Euclidean " 
space  of  three  dimensions,  or  of  a  space  of  four  or  more 
dimensions,  and  of  a  time  that  includes  the  truth  of  ours, 
and  that  still  makes  clear  how  the  world-process  somehow 
returns  into  itself.  Such  higher  forms  of  consciousness 
we  can  speculatively  view  as  possibilities.  They  may  be 
adequate  to  a  description  of  the  whole  world  of  pheno- 
mena as  viewed  by  such  higher  beings.  We,  however,  in 
our  limitation,  know  only  that  the  Self  must  have  unity 
in  himself,  —  an  appreciable  wholeness  in  his  conception 
of  the  world.  We  speak  of  him  as  infinite;  we  do  not 
mean  that  he  is  vaguely  infinite,  so  that  however  much 
of  his  thought  one  might  consider  there  would  always  be 
more  to  consider.  On  the  contrary,  he  knows  himself  as 
one,  and  so  as  eternally  complete,  —  as  a  finished  whole. 
Otherwise  he  would  be  no  self.  Therefore  our  vague  in- 
finities of  space  and  time,  never  finished,  never  explor- 
able  as  wholes,  are  very  poor  embodiments  of  his  truth. 
His  infinity,  however  it  is  constituted,  must  mean  self- 
completion.  We  may  expect,  therefore,  so  soon  as  we 
approach  the  limits  of  our  science  about  the  phenomenal 
things  in  space  and  time,  to  get  warnings  that  our  descrip- 
tive knowledge  is  an  inadequate  translation  of  the  truth, 
Such  a  warning  we  got  in  the  study  of  the  outer  order  s* 
little  while  since.  The  world  of  the  stars,  then,  and  of 
the  "  running  down  "  energy  is  not  really  what  it  seems. 
It  is  a  "  well-founded  phenomenon,"  but  not  a  final  truth. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have,  indeed,  a  perfect  right 
thus  to  say  that  the  world  of  the  stars  is,  like  the  brains 
of  our  friends,  the  well-founded  show  in  space  and  time 
of  an  appreciative  consciousness,  and  that  the  unity  of  the 
laws  of  physical  nature  is  the  outer  aspect  of  some  deep 
spiritual  unity  of  will  and  plan  in  the  world.  We  have  a 
right  to  interpret  this  unity,  in  hypothetical  forms,  as  well 


422  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

as  we  are  able.  Only  we  must  not  say  that  this  will  and 
plan  are  in  any  physical  sense  the  causes  of  our  show- 
world.  On  the  contrary,  all  physical  causation  is  itself 
part  of  the  show,  in  so  far  as  the  show  is  describable. 
They  are  perfectly  right,  therefore,  who  deny  designs  as 
factors  in  natural  processes.  The  true  World- Will,  being 
no  phenomenon  in  space  and  time,  is  no  form  of  physical 
energy,  and  moves  no  matter.  The  laws  of  matter  more 
or  less  completely  portray,  but  do  not,  physically  speak- 
ing, result  from  the  Logos.  No  creative  fiat  produced  the 
world  at  any  moment  in  past  time.  To  say  that  would  be 
to  assert  the  existence  somewhere  in  time  of  an  utterly 
indescribable  event,  which  is  precisely  what  nobody  can 
assert  of  the  world  of  time,  since  this  world  is  nothing 
unless  in  so  far  as  it  is  describable.  For  the  same 
reason  no  will,  infinite  or  finite,  ever,  by  any  temporal 
interference,  turned  aside  a  single  atom  in  its  flight. 
The  physical  world  shows  us,  indeed,  a  plan,  but  only  in 
BO  far  as  the  space  and  time  phenomena  symbolize  and 
very  poorly  translate  an  unity,  that,  as  it  is  in  itself,  is  an 
unity  of  will,  of  self-consciousness,  of  a  divine  interest  in 
truth,  of  an  equally  divine  self-possession,  of  an  eternal 
rest  in  the  fullness  of  perfected  being.  In  this  will,  the 
finite  wills  themselves  share,  and  of  it  they  are  a  part, 
eince  this  unity  includes,  knows,  and  justifies  the  organ- 
ized relationships  of  the  whole  universe  of  finite  apprecia- 
tions. The  physical  world,  then,  expresses  such  a  world- 
will,  but  is  not  subject  to  the  interference  of  this  will. 

Turning  to  the  other  aspect  of  the  natural  order  —  to 
the  aspect  in  which  this  seems  to  be  a  world  of  evolution, 
—  we  now  see  something  of  what  that  point  of  view  also 
means.  The  world  is  for  us  human  observers  a  world 
that  contains  processes  of  evolution,  in  so  far  as,  in  this 
or  that  portion  of  it,  we  detect  temporal  series  of  pheno- 
mena that  are  not  merely  describable,  but  that,  regarded  as 
wholes,  suggest  to  us  something  significant,  —  a  tale,  an 


PHYSICAL   LAW  AND   FREEDOM.  423 

appreciable  form  of  some  lengthy  sequence,  —  an  ideal 
realized,  a  bit  of  a  plan  embodied.  The  first  question  of  a 
philosophy  of  evolution  is,  Have  we  a  right  thus  to  look 
for  the  suggestion  of  plans  symbolized  by  the  most  rigid 
and  necessary  causal  sequences  of  nature?  The  answer 
is,  Certainly.  For,  as  we  now  see,  all  describable  truth  is 
an  outward  symbol  of  an  appreciable  truth.  Of  this  one 
central  principle  our  doctrine  of  the  Logos  assures  us ;  and 
to  look  for  a  plan  embodied  in  a  physical  sequence  is  not 
to  look  for  a  designing  Dsemon  in  nature,  interfering 
with  rigid  causation.  On  the  contrary,  thus  to  look  is 
simply  to  watch  for  signs  and  hints  of  the  appreciable 
aspect  that,  as  we  already  know,  is  there.  To  believe 
that  my  friend  lives  as  a  conscious  being,  is  not  to  doubt 
that  in  the  physical  world  his  only  representative  is  a 
nervous  mechanism,  whose  physiological  processes  are  as 
rigidly  necessary  and  purely  material  as  the  flight  of  a 
planet  or  the  fall  of  a  stone.  My  friend's  physical  life  is, 
indeed,  merely  a  series  of  reflexes,  with  which  his  will 
never  interferes,  any  more  than  the  concave  side  of  the 
curve  interferes  with  the  convex.  Regarded  physiologi- 
cally, his  consciousness  is  a  superfluous  extra  accompani- 
ment, or  as  it  has  been  called,  an  "  epiphenomenon,"  that 
does  nothing  with  his  brain-molecules,  but  merely  runs 
parallel  to  them  ;  but  regarded  more  deeply,  his  will,  his 
appreciative  inner  life,  is  really  his  bit  of  the  truth  of  the 
Logos,  and  is  the  only  real  truth  present.  It  is  the  physi- 
ological view,  after  all,  that  has  to  do  only  with  seemings. 
His  brain  is  the  phenomenal  outer  aspect  of  this  deeper 
truth.  Well,  even  so  in  nature  the  truth  present  is  once 
more  the  mind  of  the  Logos.  Of  this  mind  the  laws  of 
matter  are  the  show.  When  we  search  for  a  hint  of  the 
significance  of  things,  we  do  not  doubt  the  absolute  valid- 
ity and  unchangeableness  of  physical  laws  in  their  own 
sphere.  We  look  for  signs  of  the  truth  that  is  behind 
them,  interfering  not  with  them,  but  speaking  through 


424  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODKRN    PHILOSOPHY. 

the  mask  of  them.  Such  signs  appear  to  us  as  processes 
of  evolution.  As  I  often  misread  my  friend's  mind,  so 
every  such  interpretation  of  nature's  facts  is  tentative, 
und  may  be  wrong.  In  this  sphere  we  can  but  guess. 

We  have,  however,  now  mentioned  a  somewhat  novel 
contrast  between  our  descriptive  and  our  appreciative  atti- 
tude towards  a  temporal  series  of  events,  a  contrast  at 
which  it  is  necessary  still  to  glance  a  moment.  When, 
namely,  I  physically  describe,  that  is,  explain  events  by 
their  causes,  I  first  seize  upon  some  one  instant  of  time, 
some  one  event,  and  ask :  What  is  the  configuration  of  the 
world  now?  Having  found  in  a  measure  this  descrip- 
tion of  one  moment  of  the  world,  this  cross  section  of  the 
temporal  series  of  events,  I  ask  myself :  How  did  this 
condition  result  from  the  previous  state  of  the  world  ? 
Descriptively,  or  contemplatively,  then,  I  study  the  world 
from  one  moment  to  another.  But  when  I  view  a  physi- 
cal series  appreciatively,  when  I  estimate  the  world,  or 
any  part  of  it,  say  a  kind  action,  or  the  inner  life  of  my 
friend,  or  a  process  of  evolution,  I  don't  thus  dwell  on  the 
momentary  description  or  configuration  of  things,  but  I, 
as  it  were,  take  in  at  one  glance  a  whole  series  of  mo- 
ments. I  treat  some  portion  of  the  world  as  a  story.  I 
look  before  and  after  until  I  have  grasped  the  whole  of  it. 
So  (to  take  a  case  that  already  illustrates  our  attitude 
towards  all  evolution),  as  I  follow  a  melody,  I  don't  dwell 
so  much  on  the  single  note,  but  on  the  whole  sequence, 
and  on  the  sequence  as  a  whole.  Or,  once  more,  to  esti- 
mate such  an  act  as  that  of  the  good  Samaritan  in  the 
parable  is  not  to  study  his  single  attitudes,  as  configura- 
tions of  the  molecules  of  his  body.  Now  indeed  he 
comes,  now  he  stops,  now  he  kneels,  now  he  rises.  And 
all  these  conditions  might  be  causally  explained  as  a 
series  of  described  configurations  of  his  molecules.  But 
not  thus  does  one  estimate  the  good  Samaritan  ideally. 
One  rather  looks  at  the  whole  story  of  his  deed  as  one 


PHYSICAL   LAW   AND   FREEDOM.  425 

«?hole  story,  just  as  one  considers  a  melody,  or  a  progres- 
sion of  chords,  or  a  dratna,  or  any  such  sequence  of 
events. 

To  appreciate  the  world  in  historical  terms,  then,  to 
find  processes  of  evolution  in  it,  we  must  in  some  mea- 
sure forsake  the  purely  temporal  and  limited  point  of  view 
to  which  we  naturally  find  ourselves  confined,  and  to  which 
every  scientific  explanation  of  nature  is  always  confined. 
To  appreciate  even  hypothetical^  the  meaning  of  a  pro- 
cess in  time,  we  must  in  some  measure  transcend  time. 
And  this  once  more  suggests  how  th«  ideal  interests  that 
the  processes  of  nature  seem  to  serve  wherever  we  find  evo- 
lution cannot  themselves  be  viewed  as  physical  factors  in 
these  processes.  An  evolution  is  a  series  of  events  that 
in  itself  as  series  is  purely  physical,  —  a  set  of  necessary 
occurrences  in  the  world  of  space  and  time.  An  egg  de- 
velops into  a  chick ;  a  poet  grows  up  from  infancy ;  a 
nation  emerges  from  barbarism  ;  a  planet  condenses  from 
the  fluid  state,  and  develops  the  life  that  for  millions  of 
years  makes  it  so  wondrous  a  place.  Look  upon  all  these 
things  descriptively,  and  you  shall  see  nothing  but  matter 
moving  instant  after  instant,  each  instant  containing  in  its 
full  description  the  necessity  of  passing  over  into  the  next. 
Nowhere  will  there  be,  for  descriptive  science,  any  genuine 
novelty  or  any  discontinuity  admissible.  But  look  at  the 
whole  appreciatively,  historically,  synthetically,  as  a  musi- 
cian listens  to  a  symphony,  as  a  spectator  watches  a  drama. 
Now  you  shall  seem  to  have  seen,  in  phenomenal  form,  a 
story.  Passionate  interests  will  have  been  realized.  The 
will  of  the  growing  animal,  the  ideals  of  the  poet,  the  his- 
tory of  the  evolving  races,  these  will  have  passed  before 
you.  In  taking  such  a  view  are  you  likely  to  be  coming 
nearer  to  the  inner  truth  of  things  ?  Yes  ;  for  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  Logos  must  be  one  that  essentially  tran- 
scends our  own  natural  time-limitations  ;  and  in  so  far  as 
we  view  sequences  in  their  wholeness,  we  are  therefore 


426  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

likely  to  be  approaching  the  unity  of  his  world-possessing 
insight.  In  doing  all  this,  however,  we  are  not  learning 
how  ideals  have  interfered  with  nature's  mechanism,  but 
how  nature's  mechanism,  in  its  temporal  sequences,  sym- 
bolizes, as  it  must,  a  world  of  ideals.  The  student  of  evo- 
lution finds  the  world  mechanical,  because  he  is  watching 
describable  processes.  But  he  finds  the  world  also  teleo- 
logical,  because  he  is  viewing  not  merely  the  sequences 
as  such,  but  the  wholes  of  sequence  ;  is  listening  not  merely 
for  the  notes  of  nature's  music  (the  passing  events  of  in- 
stant after  instant),  but  for  the  melody  (the  appreciable 
total  of  the  life  that  is  made  up  of  many  successive  in- 
stants). And  as  the  appreciable  is  deeper  and  truer  than 
the  describable,  as  the  insight  into  the  whole  of  what  we 
mortals  call  time  is  logically  prior,  in  the  unity  of  the 
eternal  Logos,  to  the  isolation  of  our  own  finite  lives,  so 
the  student  of  evolution,  in  thus  viewing  the  world  of  his- 
tory, the  world  of  interests  that  in  the  world  of  appre- 
ciation contend  for  the  mastery,  of  ideals  that  long  for 
realization,  is  coming  nearer  to  the  truth  of  things  than 
is  he  who  merely  describes  the  necessary  sequence  of 
time.  It  is  true  that  every  such  interpretation  of  nature 
is  fragmentary  and  hypothetical;  since  we  dwell  not  at 
the  centre  of  the  truth  of  the  Logos,  but  in  our  finite  iso- 
lation of  half -conscious  temporal  insights.  It  is  also  true 
that  every  interpretation  which  I  make  of  my  friend's  in- 
ner life  is  fragmentary  and  hypothetical.  It  is  neverthe- 
less true  that  in  both  cases  interpretation  in  appreciative 
terms  is  deeper  than  mere  description  of  phenomena,  and 
is  more  likely  to  get  at  the  truth  of  things. 

And  now,  surely,  we  may  see  how  vain  are  the  anxi- 
eties of  those  who  wonder  how  conscious  life  could  ever 
have  been  evolved  on  our  planet  under  purely  physical 
conditions,  and  what  will  become  of  all  such  life  when 
the  energy  of  the  stars  runs  down.  For  at  the  present 
Btage  of  our  argument  we  know  that  there  is  no  real 


PHYSICAL  LAW   AND   FREEDOM.  427 

process  of  nature  that  must  not  have,  known  or  unknown 
to  us,  its  inner,  its  appreciable  aspect.  Otherwise  it  could 
not  be  real ;  since  in  so  far  as  it  is  merely  describable,  it 
is  also  merely  show,  is  merely  abstract,  like  the  numbers 
and  the  geometrical  figures,  and  has  no  true  fullness  of 
being.1  The  difference  between  living  and  inanimate  na- 
ture is  for  us  now  merely  the  difference  between  the  na- 
ture that  like  the  face  of  a  friend  is  near  enough  to  our 
own  for  us  to  get  a  sympathetic  suggestion  of  what  ap- 
preciative truth  it  probably  embodies,  and  the  nature  that 
like  the  infinitely  complex  ether  waves  which  fill  the  inter- 
planetary spaces  is  too  remote  from  our  own  to  be  appre- 
ciable from  our  point  of  view.  But  the  power  of  nature 
to  embody  divine  appreciations  is  not  in  this  fashion  lim- 
ited. Even  so,  processes  of  evolution  are  for  us  such 
series  of  events  as  are  near  enough  to  our  human  interests 
to  suggest  their  probable  interpretation  as  stories.  And 
so  what  we  call  life  appeared  on  our  globe  as  soon  as  na- 
ture's products  were  such  as  can  at  present  come  within 
the  range  of  our  appreciative  insight.  The  "  miracle  " 
of  the  beginning  of  life  is  merely  the  subjective  miracle 
of  our  own  human  point  of  view.  Beyond  that  beginning 
we  have  no  appreciative  insight.  This  side  of  it  we  have. 
The  "  discontinuity  "  exists  in  us,  not  in  the  truth. 

**  Animism,"  to  be  sure,  the  tendency  that  we  formerly 
also  called  "  anthropomorphism,"  the  tendency  by  mere 
analogy  to  endow  stones  or  planets  with  a  quasi-human 
life,  remains  a  misleading  tendency.  For  it  is  not  ours 
to  speculate  what  appreciative  inner  life  is  hidden  be^ 
hind  the  describable  but  seemingly  lifeless  things  of  the 
world.  But  what  we  know  is  that  it  must  be  what  it  is 
in  so  far  as  the  self-consciousness  of  the  Logos  finds  a 
place  for  it ;  and  this  place  must  be,  like  that  of  our  own 
finite  consciousness,  a  place  in  the  world  of  appreciation. 
The  rest  is  to  us  mortals  as  yet  wholly  unknown.  But  this 
1  Or,  as  Hegel  would  say,  Wirlclichkeit. 


428  THE  SPIKIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

consideration  sets  aside  the  anxious  question  as  to  the  rise 
of  consciousness  in  general.  The  world  has  always  had 
its  appreciable  aspect.  We  mortals  ourselves  stand  on  the 
shore  of  this  boundless  world  of  appreciation,  and  describ- 
ing this  or  that  pebble,  or  looking  at  this  or  that  breaking 
wave,  seem  to  understand  a  little  of  their  meaning.  We 
know  that  the  whole  limitless  ocean  is  full  of  an  infinite 
meaning,  since  otherwise  its  throbbing  billows  and  innu- 
merable currents,  its  depths  and  unexplored  solitudes,  its 
resistless  tides  and  its  divinely  mighty  storms,  would  not 
be  real.  If  we  ask  what  this  meaning  is,  we  see  again 
only  wave  after  wave  approaching,  curving,  gleaming, 
and  breaking  on  the  beach  ;  and  we  hear  only  the  eter- 
nal thunder  of  this  restless  life.  Each  new  wave  we  men 
call  a  process  of  evolution.  The  world  of  what  appears 
tx>  us  as  endless  time  seems  in  our  neighborhood  to  be 
filled  with  such  processes.  And  herewith  our  empirical 
knowledge  ends.  Do  we  doubt  whether  there  is  truth 
and  clear  insight  behind  all  this  imperfect  experience  of 
ours  ?  The  very  question,  as  we  have  already  seen,  in- 
volves its  own  answer.  The  problem  can  exist  only  as 
transcended  by  the  insight  of  the  Solver  of  problems. 

IX. 

The  third  and  last  of  our  concluding  considerations 
relates  to  the  problem  of  freedom. 

If  one  asks  as  to  the  world  of  appreciation  in  its  whole- 
ness, What  efficient  power  caused  it  to  exist?  the  ques- 
tion is  for  the  first  meaningless.  For  cause,  as  usually 
understood,  relates  to  the  world  of  description,  and  to  the 
explanation  of  temporal  sequences.  The  only  cause  that 
you  can  seek  in  the  world  of  appreciation  is  in  a  very  dif- 
ferent sense  a  cause.  It  is,  namely,  a  justification  for  this  as 
against  any  other  fashion  of  will  and  of  self-consciousness. 
The  world  in  its  wholeness  appears  to  us  in  space  and 
time  as  a  describable  system  of  phenomena,  bound  together 


PHYSICAL   LAW  AND   FREEDOM.  429 

by  rigid  law.  That,  however,  just  this  system  of  phe- 
nomena, these  atoms,  these  physical  laws,  this  order  of 
nature  should  be  there,  rather  than  some  other  equally 
describable  system,  with  other  atoms  and  other  types  of 
motion,  —  this  seems  to  us  the  mere  fact,  the  gigantic  ca- 
price of  nature.  Viewing  this  same  caprice  in  its  other 
aspect,  namely,  as  a  system  of  appreciable  truth  and  of 
the  inner  ideals  of  the  Logos,  we  do  not  indeed  get  rid  of 
the  aspect  of  what  Hegel  called  Unmittelbarkeit  or  "  im- 
mediacy "  about  the  world.  It  is  what  it  is.  So  the 
Logos,  from  eternity,  and  in  one  organic  all-embracing 
act,  constitutes  his  system  of  appreciative  truth.  If  we 
still  ask  why  ?  we  must  answer,  not  with  Schopenhauer, 
"  For  no  reason,"  but  with  all  the  rational  idealists, 
"  Freely,  and  solely  for  the  reason  most  pleasing  to  him- 
self, but  not  without  reason."  For  such  is  the  necessary 
consequence  of  the  conception  of  an  untrammeled  and 
fully  self-possessed  Self,  who  solves  all  his  own  problems, 
including  the  problem,  Why  this  eternal  choice?  The 
element  of  caprice  is  there,  in  so  far  as  none  but  the  Self 
can  fathom  his  own  will.  The  World-Will  is  so  far  like  a 
fair  maiden,  "  in  her  silence  eloquent,"  who  chooses  be- 
cause such  is  her  choice.  Yet  the  caprice  is,  in  the  case 
of  the  completely  self-conscious  Will,  a  necessary  element 
of  its  reason.  The  highest  Reason  has  no  reason  beyond 
it,  and  in  so  far  it  is  capricious.  But  it  includes  all 
lower  reasons,  and  all  finite  points  of  view,  and  so  as 
against  them  is  infinitely  less  capricious,  in  the  baser 
sense  of  the  word,  than  they,  since  they  are  infinitely  less 
aware  of  their  own  meaning  ;  and  it  lacks  their  blindness. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  we  have  called  the  world  of 
appreciation  one  of  freedom.  But  how  are  our  finite 
wills  related  to  this  freedom?  Are  we  predestined  to 
our  place  in  the  world-order  ?  Are  we  "  impotent  pieces 
of  the  game  he  plays  ?  "  The  answer,  as  I  conceive,  is 
this :  In  so  far  as  we  are  clearly  conscious  of  our  own 


'430  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

choices,  we  ourselves  are  part  of  the  world  of  apprecia- 
tion. We  are  then,  ourselves,  conscious  bits  of  the  Self. 
Our  wills  are  part  of  his  freedom.  And  hereby  we  too  are 
free.  Only  in  so  far,  however,  as  we  are  not  conscious  of 
our  choices,  but  only  find  in  ourselves  blind  and  uncon- 
scious impulses,  mere  facts  of  hereditary  temperament,  or 
of  momentary  mood,  we  do  not  enter  into  his  freedom. 
Some  one  else,  we  know  not  who,  some  ancestor,  some 
good  or  evil  angel,  may  then  have  chosen  these  things  for 
us,  not  we.  But  our  conscious  volition  is  a  fragment  of 
the  freedom  of  the  World- WilL 

But  how,  one  may  ask,  can  I  be  in  any  sense  thus  free  ? 
After  all,  is  not  my  consciousness,  viewed  as  a  fact  in 
time,  tied  hopelessly  to  this  describable  nervous  mechanism 
of  mine  ?  The  world,  in  its  divinely  free  capriciousness, 
involves  a  physical  order  that  necessarily  contains  just 
this  organism.  What  the  organism  itself  will  do  in  given 
circumstances,  is  therefore  physiologically  determined  by 
the  whole  order  of  nature  and  by  the  whole  of  past  time. 
And  my  will  moves  no  atom  of  this  mechanism  aside  from 
its  predestined  course.  And  yet  I,  whose  will  is  just 
so  much  of  the  world  of  appreciation  as  constitutes  the 
inner  aspect  of  this  describable  mechanism,  —  I  shall  in 
some  sense  be  free  ?  How  explain  such  a  paradox  ? 

In  answer  I  appeal  afresh  to  that  double  aspect  which 
the  world  of  time  has  already  presented  to  us  as  we  spoke 
of  the  facts  of  evolution.  Whatever  the  true  facts  about 
what  we  call  time  may  be,  as  they  are  known  to  the  Self, 
we  are  sure  that  the  order  of  nature,  from  what  we  are 
obliged  to  call  the  infinite  past  to  the  infinite  future,  just 
because  it  does  all  of  it  express  one  law,  just  because  it 
must  all  be  absolutely  foreknown,  is  present  in  one  time- 
transcending  instant  to  the  insight  of  the  Logos.  It  is 
present,  I  insist,  because  it  is  all  one  truth,  and  because 
the  infinite  Self  is  there  to  know  all  truth.  But  how  all 
the  world  of  time  can  and  must  thus  form  to  the  infinite 


PHYSICAL  LAW  AND  FREEDOM.  431 

Self  a  single  instant  of  time-transcending  knowledge  is 
after  all  not  so  very  hard  to  conceive,  at  least  in  general. 
You  all  the  while,  in  your  finite  capacity,  in  so  far  as  you 
are  self-conscious,  do  transcend  time,  yes,  you  yourself. 
A  sequence  of  chords  is  not  a  mere  series  of  events  to  you, 
whose  earlier  moments  are  non-existent  when  the  later  are 
there.  The  whole  series  is  one  artistic  moment  to  you. 
Reflection  continually  transcends  time.  Your  life  is  a 
"looking  before  and  after."  This  time-transcendence 
bears  precisely  the  relation  to  the  single  events  of  your 
life  that  consciousness  in  general  bears  to  your  brain- 
states.  This  transcending  of  a  time-series,  and  estimat- 
ing it  as  one  whole,  is  in  fact  what  one  might  call  the  soul 
of  the  natural  order.  For  the  ideal  or  appreciable  order 
is  thus  in  fact  linked  to  the  natural  order  precisely  as  mind 
in  the  finite  sense  is  linked  to  body.  Without  time  to  re- 
flect upon  and  transcend,  there  would  indeed  be  no  finite 
consciousness  of  an  ideal  or  appreciable  value  in  things. 
But  this  consciousness  of  the  appreciable  aspect  of  the 
events  of  time  views  the  temporal  world  as  the  musical 
hearer  views  the  whole  symphony,  seeing  the  end  in  the 
beginning,  and  the  beginning  in  the  end,  not  explaining, 
not  describing  in  causal  terms,  but  making  an  appreciable 
synthesis  of  time  in  one  glance. 

This  being  the  case,  our  own  consciousness,  at  a  moment 
of  choice,  is  itself  twofold.  Our  organism  passes  through 
a  series  of  states,  constituting  what  we  call  an  act.  This 
act  fills  up  a  considerable  time.  Of  the  successive  states 
we  are  aware.  So  far  we  ourselves  live  in  time,  and  fol- 
low the  series,  perceiving  nothing  but  what  must  be  de- 
scribable  and  necessary.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  are 
truly  self-conscious,  we  are  aware  of  some  significance,  of 
«ome  ideal  value,  in  the  series  of  states  as  a  whole.  The 
melody  (to  return  to  that  figure)  —  the  melody  of  con- 
duct interests  us,  far  more  than  the  notes  of  our  momen- 
tary physical  reaction.  But  in  just  so  far  we  actually 


432  THE   SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

seem  to  ourselves  to  be  choosing  the  conduct  as  such,  since 
we  are  approving  this  whole  series  of  physical  events.  On 
this  side  of  our  twofold  consciousness,  then,  we  are  all  the 
while  truly  transcending  time,  yes,  are  taking  hold  upon 
and  forming  spiritually  part  of  that  absolutely  time-tran- 
scending appreciation  that  the  Self  possesses  in  view  of 
the  whole  physical  order.  Such  an  inclusive  moment  of 
conscious  choice,  in  fact,  does  possess  in  one  act  a  past 
and  a  future,  does  estimate  whole  series  of  events,  and, 
although,  in  its  finite  capacity,  it  is  dependent  on  a  brain 
state,  still,  in  its  significance,  in  this  its  ideal  comment,  it 
takes  hold  upon  the  distant  in  time.  Such  consciousness, 
therefore,  being  always  a  time-transcending  estimate  of 
physical  series  as  wholes,  may  be  indeed  dependent  on 
brain-states,  but  in  significance  it  is  already,  in  its  mea- 
sure, a  part  of  the  eternal  world-estimate,  which,  as  we 
have  learned,  is  a  far  deeper  reality  than  the  world  of  phy- 
sical nature  itself,  and  as  a  whole  is  no  event  in  time  at 
all,  but  a  transcendent  spiritual  estimate  of  all  time. 

But  if  you  have  followed  me  thus  far  into  this  rather 
breathless  region  of  speculation  you  may  now  finally  ask, 
"  But  does  all  this  make  us  morally  free  ?  "  I  answer, 
in  a  very  profound  sense,  it  does.  For  gather  once  more 
into  one  the  threads  of  our  argument.  The  Self,  we  say, 
regards  its  world  in  a  twofold  way:  (1)  As  a  time  series 
of  events  in  which  the  earlier  events  fatally  cause  the 
later;  (2)  As  an  eternally  complete  world  total,  whose 
significance  it  ideally  estimates  and  chooses.  And  we,  in 
so  far  as  we  are  morally  judging  beings,  in  so  far  as  we 
too  make  ideal  estimates,  are  a  part  of  the  Self  in  this 
second  sense,  living  not  merely  in  time,  but  also  above 
time,  beyond  time.  In  so  far  as  we  are  temporal  facts, 
we  are  indeed  mere  descendants  of  an  animal  ancestry, 
mere  creatures  of  nerves.  But  we  are  far  more  than  tern* 
poral.  And  now  remember:  this  temporal  order,  rigid 
and  necessary  in  itself,  is  it  not  after  all  only  one  of  inti- 


PHYSICAL  LAW   AND   FREEDOM.  433 

nitely  numerous  possible  world-orders,  any  one  of  which 
could  be  conceived  by  the  Self,  but  all  of  which,  from  the 
eternal  point  of  view,  are  deliberately  left  unconceived, 
unreal,  because  of  the  ideal  estimate  which  the  Self  makes 
in  choosing  this  world  ?  What  then,  though  we  are  bound 
in  the  temporal  world,  may  we  not  indeed  be  free,  —  yes, 
and  in  a  non-temporal  and  transcendent  sense  effective  too 
in  the  eternal  world  ?  May  we  not  in  fact,  as  parts  of  an 
eternal  order,  be  choosing  not  indeed  this  or  that  thing  in 
time,  but  helping  to  choose  out  and  out  what  world  this 
fatal  temporal  world  shall  eternally  be  and  have  been  ? 
This,  as  some  of  you  know,  was  Kant's  famous  doctrine 
of  what  he  called  the  transcendental  or  extra-temporal 
freedom  and  the  temporal  necessity  of  all  our  actions. 
From  this  point  of  view,  as  you  may  already  in  part  see, 
the  natural  and  the  spiritual  orders,  the  physical  and  the 
moral  orders,  the  divine  and  the  human,  the  fatal  and 
the  free,  may  be  finally  reconciled.  If  this  be  so,  then 
indeed  we  shall  no  longer  fear  fate,  no  longer  dread  the 
facts  of  nervous  physiology,  no  longer  be  appalled  by  na- 
ture, no  longer  appeal  to  temporal  miracles  to  save  the 
ideals.  God  and  Cassar  will  indeed  become  reconciled. 
Is  such  an  hypothesis  after  all  impossible  ?  I  think  not. 
I  hold  it  rather  to  be  the  deepest  truth. 

But  all  this,  I  once  more  admit,  must  still  seem,  when 
thus  presented,  very  unpersuasive.  The  limits  of  a  rela- 
tively untechnical  discussion  permit  as  I  thus  close  only 
this  dim  suggestion  of  one  of  the  deepest  insights  of 
modern  philosophy.  If  it  is  right,  your  acts  are  at  once 
firmi  the  temporal  point  of  view  absolutely  bound,  and 
from  the  eternal  point  of  view  absolutely  free.  For  you 
enter  into  the  divine  order  in  two  ways.  In  this  world 
you  are  a  fact  in  time,  descended  from  the  animals,  a 
creature  with  just  this  brain,  doomed  for  countless  ages 
to  precisely  this  conduct.  But  the  whole  temporal  order 
is  for  the  absolute  Self,  of  whom  you  are  a  part,  only 


434  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

one  way  of  looking  at  truth.  All  eternity  is  before 
him  at  a  glance.  He  has  chosen  not  temporally,  but  in 
an  act  above  all  time,  yet  an  act  in  which  you  yourself 
share,  to  conceive  this  world  which  contains  you.  He  has 
chosen  this  world  for  the  sake  of  its  worth.  And  in  the 
estimate  that  eternally  chooses,  your  will,  your  time-tran- 
scending personality,  your  consciousness  has  its  part  also. 
You  are  not  morally  free  to  change  laws  in  this  world. 
But  you  are  moral  and  free  because  you  are  in  the  eter- 
nal sense  a  part  of  the  eternal  World-Creator,  who  never 
made  the  world  at  any  moment  of  time,  but  whose  choice 
of  this  describable  world  of  time  in  its  wholeness  is  what 
constitutes  the  world  of  appreciation,  which  is  the  world 
of  truth. 


LECTURE   XIIL 

OPTIMISM,    PESSIMISM,   AND   THE  MOEAL   ORDEB. 

Too  long  I  have  detained  you,  in  the  previous  lecture, 
with  the  discussion  of  the  intricate  speculative  problems 
suggested  to  us  by  the  physical  world.  This  evening  I 
return  to  more  practical  issues.  During  the  course  of 
our  historical  discussions,  we  have  had  occasion  to  study 
the  idealistic  doctrines  of  earlier  thinkers  from  two  points 
of  view.  They  appeared  as  efforts  to  explain  the  nature 
of  human  knowledge,  and  as  attempts  to  give  form  to  the 
spiritual  interests  of  humanity.  It  is,  of  course,  in  the 
latter  sense  that  idealism  usually  seems  most  attractive  to 
the  general  reader.  Other  theories  of  the  world  may  or 
may  not  be  influenced  by  ethical  considerations.  A  doc- 
trine which  defines  reality  in  terms  of  the  absolute  Self 
seems  bound  to  make  prominent  the  spiritual.  In  fact 
this  is,  to  many  minds,  a  defect  of  idealism,  in  that  the 
doctrine  appears  to  them  rather  the  outcome  of  a  moral 
enthusiasm  than  an  embodiment  of  a  cool  and  critical 
scrutiny  of  the  world  as  it  is.  We  have  already  tried,  so 
far  as  our  limited  time  permitted,  to  remove  from  idealism 
something  of  this  reproach  of  being  a  mere  poem  of  moral 
enthusiasm.  We  do  not  believe  in  the  world  of  the  abso- 
lute Self  because  we  merely  long  for  something  spiritual 
in  our  world.  The  doctrine,  such  as  I  conceive  it  to  be, 
seems  to  me  rather  the  outcome  of  a  rigid  logical  analysis, 
whose  nature  indeed  I  could  only  sketch  in  these  brief 
lectures,  but  whose  value  for  philosophy  is  indicated  by 
the  whole  history  of  modern  thoiight.  Yet  now  that  the 
theoretical  question  has  been  considered,  we  have  a  right 


436  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

in  conclusion  to  draw  what  advantage  we  can  for  our  spin* 
itual  interests  from  the  truths  that  theory  has  taught  us. 

I. 

You  are  aware  already  how  much  and  how  little  this 
idealism  pretends  to  know  about  the  world.  The  world 
has  inevitably  the  moment  of  relatively  capricious  will 
about  it.  Its  existence  is  a  fact,  chosen  from  eternity  by 
the  Self.  We  cannot  fathom  this  choice,  we  cannot  be 
clear  as  to  the  precise  meaning  of  this  decree,  except  in 
so  far  as  we  men  too  share  in  the  choice,  that  is,  in  so  far 
as  we  too,  in  our  own  active  life,  are  conscious  of  our  own 
purposes.  In  choosing  for  ourselves,  we  enter  into  and 
partake  of  the  Self  who  chooses  this  from  the  infinity  of 
possible  worlds.  No  abstract  "  descriptive "  reason  can 
deduce  what  it  is  about  the  world  which  makes  it  good,  that 
is,  worth  choosing.  We  can  for  the  first  only  say,  So  it 
is.  We  can  comprehend  the  significance  of  this  world- 
estimate,  of  this  appreciative  aspect  of  things,  only  in  so 
far  as  we  too  are  appreciative,  are  more  than  theoretical, 
are  will  as  well  as  thought. 

From  the  purely  theoretical  or  "  descriptive  "  point  of 
view  all  will,  all  appreciation,  is  capricious ;  for  in  vain 
do  you  try  to  show  by  merely  describing  the  laws  and 
contents  of  things  why  they  should  possess  this  or  that 
value.  Deduction  only  proves  ideal  values  when  such 
values  have  already  been  presupposed.  Yet  this  capri- 
ciousness  of  the  will  is  not,  as  Schopenhauer  thought, 
irrationality.  The  rational  will  is  one  that  to  complete 
self-consciousness  adds  self -justification,  and  that  is,  ac- 
cordingly, its  own  judge  and  its  own  vindicator.  Is  the 
choice  that  wills  the  world  of  this  nature  ?  Regarded 
from  the  purely  theoretical  side  it  must  appear  as  capri- 
cious, for  there  can  be  no  merely  theoretical,  or,  as  we  are 
accustomed  to  say,  logical  reason,  why  it  might  not  have 
chosen  otherwise.  But  regarded  as  the  choice  of  an  eternal 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND  THE  MORAL   ORDER.       437 

World-Self,  the  world  cannot,  so  to  speak,  be  the  choice 
of  a  dissatisfied  and  peevish  Logos,  who  eternally  sorrows 
that  he  does  not  choose  some  other  world  instead.  For 
dissatisfaction  is  due  to  either  one  of  two  causes:  (1) 
That  the  dissatisfied  will  is  not  the  only  one  concerned, 
but  finds  itself  defeated  by  a  foreign  opponent ;  or  (2) 
That  the  dissatisfied  will  is  foolish,  and  knows  not  what  it 
really  wants.  We  finite  bits  of  the  Self  are  well  ac- 
quainted with  both  these  sources  of  grief ;  and  since  the 
World-Self  is  simply  the  self-conscious  organism  of  all  of 
us,  he  too  is  inevitably  well  acquainted  with  the  nature  of 
these  our  woes,  and  in  so  far  shares  them.  But  his 
acquaintance  with  our  griefs  need  not  be,  cannot  be,  the 
sense  of  the  entire  failure  of  the  whole  organism  of  his 
timeless  choice.  That  choice  includes  all  the  time  events, 
and  it  is  of  the  essence  of  temporal  moments  of  conscious- 
ness to  be  discontented.  But  Hegel  has  already  suggested 
to  us  how  above  the  endless  conflict  victory  may  live.  It 
is  the  purpose  of  this  final  lecture  to  give  to  that  thought 
further  illustration. 

Two  principles  must  be  propounded  at  the  start.  Their 
reconciliation  may  be  difficult.  They  form  in  fact  the 
opposing  members  of  the  great  "  antinomy  "  of  the  spirit- 
ual world.  They  are,  that  is,  in  sharp  apparent  conflict 
with  each  other.  Yet  they  must  both  be  true,  for  they 
are  both  demonstrable. 

One  of  them  is  the  principle  that  there  must  be  some 
sort  of  evil  present  wherever  there  is  a  finite  will.  It 
is  not  joyous  to  be  finite,  in  so  far  as  one  is  finite.  One 
longs  always  to  know  more,  and  to  possess  more ;  and 
one  lives  in  all  sorts  of  paradoxical  relations  to  other 
finite  life.  One  lives  in  time,  or  in  some  such  imperfect 
form  of  appreciative  consciousness,  and  one  preserves 
one's  finitude,  and  so  one's  endless  cares,  by  wondering 
and  striving  with  some  sort  of  reference  to  the  other 
moments  of  time,  to  the  other  appreciations  that  lie  be- 


438  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

yoiid  one.  To  be  sure  all  this  has  too  its  joyous  side,  in 
so  far,  namely,  as  there  is  more  about  our  finite  life  than 
its  mere  finitude.  Most  of  us  had  rather  be  finite  than 
nothing,  although  even  that  is  not  necessarily  our  opinion. 
But  to  be  bounded  in  a  nut-shell  and  to  have  bad  dreams 
as  well  is  of  the  essence  of  temporality  and  finitude  in  so 
far  as  they  are  regarded  as  such. 

In  view  of  this  truth  one  can  well  say  that,  speaking  in 
temporal  terms,  there  just  now  is  in  the  world  nobody 
who  is  content  with  it.  The  Omar  Khayyam  stanzas  of 
Fitzgerald  are  so  far  philosophically  right,  and  forever 
true :  — 

"  Up  from  Earth's  Centre  through  the  Seventh  Gate 
I  rose,  and  on  the  Throne  of  Saturn  sate, 

And  many  a  Knot  unravel 'd  by  the  Road  ; 
But  not  the  Master-Knot  of  Human  Fate. 

**  There  was  the  Door  to  which  I  found  no  Key  ; 
There  was  the  Veil  through  which  I  might  not  see : 

Some  little  talk  awhile  of  Me  and  Thee 
There  was  —  and  then  no  more  of  Thee  and  Me. 

*'  Earth  could  not  answer  ;  nor  the  Seas  that  mourn 
In  flowing  Purple,  of  their  Lord  forlorn  ; 

Nor  rolling  Heaven  with  all  his  Signs  revealed 
And  hidden  by  the  sleeve  of  Night  and  Morn." 

No  better  account  could  be  given  of  the  temporal  order 
as  it  appears,  when  viewed  appreciatively,  at  any  finite 
moment,  or  of  the  inevitable  result  of  seeking  the  divine 
or  the  satisfying  therein.  So  viewed  the  seas  are  indeed 
of  their  Lord  forlorn.  As  Lord  he  is  found  in  no  temporal 
moment,  whether  one  passes  through  the  "  seventh  gate  " 
or  not  to  look  for  him.  If  one  is  speaking  of  the  com- 
plete God,  the  true  Logos,  and  if  one  is  using  the  temporal 
and  not  the  eternal  sense  of  is,  it  is  perfectly  accurate  to 
say  that  God  is  not,  say  in  the  year  1892,  just  as  he  was 
not  in  Elijah's  fire  and  earthquake.  He  is  no  affair  of  con- 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND   THE   MORAL   ORDER.        439 

temporary  history.  No  reporter  of  even  a  celestial  news- 
paper could  discover,  by  any  watching,  items  of  current 
interest  concerning  him.  His  omnipresence  is  the  presence 
of  time  and  of  space  in  him,  not  of  his  completeness  in 
any  part  of  them.  He  is  their  universal,  they  are  not  his 
prison.  Therefore  search  the  world  as  you  might  at  this 
moment,  with  the  well-known  astronomer's  telescope  that 
very  truthfully  showed  no  God,  or  with  the  eyes  of  men 
and  angels;  you  would  doubtless  find  only  discontented 
worms  and  seraphs,  and  other  such  finite  toilers,  —  the 
whole  creation  groaning  and  travailing  in  pain,  and  cry- 
ing, Lord,  how  long  !  For  time  is  in  fact  very  long,  nor 
does  one  get  to  the  end  of  sorrow  in  the  whole  of  it. 
Some  of  these  finite  creatures  would  indeed  be  calling 
this  or  that  temporal  joy  good,  but  all  of  them,  however 
amused  they  were,  would  be  in  the  act  of  striving  for  the 
next  moment  of  time  to  come.  For  to  do  that  seems  to 
be  of  the  very  essence  of  temporal  consciousness.  Not 
one  of  them  all  who  knew  what  he  was  saying  would  be 
uttering  the  fatal  cry  that  Faust  was  to  avoid :  "  Oh 
moment,  stay,  thou  art  so  fair !  "  The  best  of  their  joyous 
moments  would  be  under  the  illusion  that  the  next  mo- 
ment was  likely  to  be  a  little  better ;  and  they  would  be 
hoping  for  that,  as  one  hopes  continually,  while  one  listens 
to  music,  for  the  next  phrase,  and  colors  one's  joy  with 
this  longing. 

The  other  principle  mentioned  above  is  the  thought 
that,  notwithstanding  all  this,  the  Logos  in  his  wholeness 
must  find  his  choice  of  this  universe  rational,  and  so,  in 
and  through  all  this  imperfection,  must  find  a  total  per- 
fection. Were  it  a  problem  how  to  have  a  better  world, 
the  Self,  as  complete,  would  have  solved  the  problem. 
Were  it  a  question  of  a  wiser  choice,  the  Self  in  his  wis- 
dom would  have  executed  from  eternity  this  wiser  choice. 
Were  it  a  matter  of  foreign  necessity  that  inflicted  evil, 
the  Self  would,  in  existing  have  eternally  absorbed  thia 


440  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

foreign  element  into  his  own  organic  nature.1  The  world 
that  is,  is  then  indeed,  as  Leibnitz  said,  the  best  of  pos« 
sible  worlds.  The  problem  is,  How  can  this  be,  without 
interfering  with  the  foregoing  principle  of  the  essential 
evil  of  finite  existence  ? 

II. 

Let  us  begin  our  discussion  of  this  ancient  problem 
with  its  most  immediately  obvious  illustration,  the  prob- 
lem of  moral  evil.  One  who  first  sees  the  truth  that  the 
world  of  the  Self  must  be,  in  its  wholeness,  a  good  world, 
is  likely  to  rejoice  even  too  easily  in  the  notion  that 
through  this  insight  he  has  come  indeed  very  near  to  the 
goal  that  all  the  religions  have  sought.  Yet  one  who  finds 
himself  thus  close,  as  it  were,  to  the  gate  of  the  celestial 
city  and  to  a  glimpse  of  the  golden  glories  within  it,  nigh 
to  the  palace  of  the  king,  does,  after  all,  well  to  tremble, 
nevertheless,  when  he  considers  how  easy  it  is  to  say  such 
things  about  the  perfection  of  God's  world,  and  how  hard 
it  is  to  give  concreteness  and  weight  to  the  mere  abstrac- 
tions of  the  religious  consciousness.  God's  world,  in  be- 
ing good,  can  surely  be  nothing  less  serious  than  a  moral 
order.  And  a  moral  order,  regarded  from  a  temporal 
point  of  view,  is  so  grave  and  stern  a  thing !  Remember 
the  fate  of  poor  Ignorance,  in  Bunyan's  "  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress," the  fate  that  we  mentioned  when  we  were  studying 
Schopenhauer's  pessimism.  Poor  Ignorance  reached  the 
very  gate  of  the  celestial  city,  yet  the  angels  carried  him 

1  Here,  of  course,  Von  Hartmann's  doctrine  of  the  twofold  nature 
of  his  unconscious,  as  Will  and  Wisdom,  these  two  being  essentially 
foreign  to  each  other,  will  suggest  itself  to  some.  The  former  lec- 
ture has  suggested  my  own  reason  for  holding  that  these  two  are 
inseparable.  The  parallelism  and  at  the  same  time  the  opposition  of 
my  own  views  to  those  of  Von  Hartmann  will  be  obvious  to  many 
readers.  Like  him  I  am  endeavoring  to  draw  a  synthetic  conclusion 
from  the  post-Kantian  idealists,  from  Schopenhauer,  and  from  modern 
science.  I  have  worked,  for  the  most  part,  quite  independently  of 
his  influence.  I  must  acknowledge  his  great  value  and  his  priority. 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND  THE   MORAL  ORDER.        441 

away  to  the  bottomless  pit.  Those  who  view  the  perfec- 
tion of  God's  world  merely  in  this  first  abstract  fashion 
run  indeed  the  risk  of  a  similar  fate.  Pessimism  and 
despair  are  not  so  far  away  from  them  as  they  think.  It 
is  not  until  they  shall  have  learned  somehow  the  serious- 
ness of  the  moral  aspect  of  the  divine  order ;  it  is  not 
until  they  have  faced  the  tragedy  of  life,  as  well  as  its 
divine  consummation  ;  it  is  not  until  they  have  learned  to 
recognize  the  moral  order  as  essentially  a  hard  master, 
and  the  misery  of  the  finite  world  as  a  necessary  element 
of  the  essentially  severe  significance  of  the  universe ;  it  is 
not  until  all  this  has  come  home  to  them  that  they  will 
have  any  real  right  to  the  comfort  that  idealism  offers.  I 
want  to  make  this  fact  plain. 

All  popular  religious  faith  usually  begins,  as  we  saw  in 
an  earlier  lecture,  by  assuring  a  man  after  far  too  light 
and  easy  a  fashion  that  everything  will  be  well  in  this 
world  for  those  who  do  God's  will,  and  that  the  moral 
order  secures  at  once  the  triumph  of  the  good  cause,  and 
the  joy  of  all  who  serve  this  cause  with  a  pure  heart. 
Just  at  the  present  moment,  curiously  enough,  despite  all 
the  skepticism  of  the  day,  such  easy  religious  optimism  as 
this  chances  to  be  in  great  popular  favor  ;  and  for  all  my 
idealism,  I  regret  this  popularity  of  optimism.  During 
these  controversies  concerning  creed-revisions  and  other 
forms  of  religious  progress  which  have  been  before  the 
public  during  the  past  few  years,  I  have  noticed  not  only 
that  it  has  been  customary  to  frown  upon  all  attempts  to 
defend  stern  old  dogmas,  such  as  the  depravity  of  man 
and  the  universal  condemnation  of  all  our  race  in  its 
unsaved  condition,  but  that  the  reason  given  as  an  axio- 
matic justification  for  this  disapproval  has  usually  been  a 
very  optimistic  reason.  People  who  pretend  at  other 
times  to  be  very  agnostic,  become  here  of  a  sudden  very 
confident.  It  would  be  melancholy,  they  say,  to  live  in  a 
World  where  the  heathen  had  not  as  fair  a  chance  for  sal* 


442  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

vation  as  anybody  else.  It  would  be  atrocious  if  the 
consequences  of  sin  were  to  prove  too  grave.  If  we  can- 
not reconcile  a  given  supposition  with  the  mercy  of  God, 
then  the  supposition  must  be  false.  And  all  this  reason- 
ing, when  more  fully  analyzed,  usiially  proves  to  mean,  in 
the  minds  of  those  who  use  it,  a  sense  that  if  there  is  any 
spiritual  order  in  this  universe  it  must  be  an  order  that 
does  not  permit  very  many  ills,  and  that,  above  all,  does 
reward,  quickly,  all  good  efforts.  Thus  reasoning,  the 
religious  optimist  of  the  day  finds  his  comfort  in  an  as- 
surance of  the  kindliness  of  God,  of  the  early  triumph  of 
morality  and  of  the  general  peacefulness  of  the  universe, 
an  assurance,  I  say,  which,  on  the  whole,  I  cannot  share. 
I  believe,  indeed,  that  all  the  evil  is  part  of  a  good  order. 
I  believe  in  the  supremacy  of  the  spiritual ;  and  yet  often 
during  those  popular  controversies  of  recent  years,  I  have 
found  myself,  as  a  relatively  dispassionate  metaphysical 
observer,  sympathizing  rather  with  the  advocates  of  the 
sterner  old  creeds,  not,  to  be  sure,  because  I  have  accepted 
the  sometimes  irrational  form  which  tradition  had  given 
to  this  or  that  dogma,  but  because  I  regretted  the  loss  of 
moral  rigidity  which  our  fathers  knew  how  to  conceive  as 
the  very  essence  of  the  truly  spiritual.  But,  not  to  weary 
you  with  the  details  of  too  well-known  and  unfruitful 
theological  controversies,  I  may  as  well  at  once  remind 
you  of  a  modern  poem  which  confesses  in  a  most  interest- 
ing fashion  just  such  a  religious  optimism  as  I  now  have 
in  mind,  and  as  I  do  not  accept.  I  am  undertaking  at  this 
point  a  study  and  criticism  of  such  a  fashion  of  conceiving 
the  world  of  spiritual  concerns ;  I  am  glad  to  be  able  to 
let  it  express  itself  so  fervently  and  skillfully.  The  poem 
which  I  refer  to  is  one  of  the  few  really  strong  produc- 
tions of  the  interesting  Southern  poet,  Sidney  Lanier, 
whose  death  a  few  years  since  deprived  our  country  of  a 
promising,  but  so  far  comparatively  undeveloped  man. 
The  poem,  entitled  "  How  Love  looked  for  Hell,"  is  in. 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND   THE   MORAL  ORDER.       443 

tended  to  describe  the  world  where  all  evil  is  purely  illu- 
sory, and  where  the  spirit  triumphs  by  simply  denying 
the  existence  of  all  its  opponents.  Many  people,  and  for 
that  matter  many  idealists,  conceive  their  world  in  these 
terms.  And  I  therefore  let  Lanier  state  their  case :  — 

"  To  heal  his  heart  of  long-time  pain 
One  day  Prince  Love  for  to  travel  was  fain 

With  Ministers  Mind  and  Sense. 
'  Now  what  to  thee  most  strange  may  be  ? ' 
Quoth  Mind  and  Sense.     '  All  things  above. 
One  curious  thing  I  first  would  see,  — 
Hell,'  quoth  Love. 

"Then  Mind  rode  in  and  Sense  rode  out : 
They  searched  the  ways  of  man  about. 

First  frightfully  groaneth  Sense, 
'  'T  is  here,  't  is  here,'  and  spurreth  in  fear 
To  the  top  of  the  hill  that  haiigeth  above 
And  plucketh  the  Prince  :  '  Come,  come,  't  is  here.1 
«  Where  ?  '  quoth  Love." 

Accordingly,  as  Lanier  proceeds  to  describe,  Love  fol- 
lows his  minister  Sense  to  the  place  where,  according  to 
the  latter,  there  is  a  very  black  stream  flowing,  and  where 
a  very  cold  wind  blows,  while  beyond  the  stream  one  can 
see  lost  souls  struggling  in  burning  lakes.  Love  goes 
very  curiously  to  the  place,  hunting  somewhat  skeptically, 
as  if,  to  borrow  a  certain  modern  and  possibly  too  crudely 
optimistic  comparison  that  I  have  sometimes  found  in  use, 
he  were  an  electric  light  engaged  in  the  search  for  a 
shadow ;  and  lo !  when  he  reaches  the  spot  in  question, 
somehow  the  scene  has  become  transformed.  The  black 
stream  has  changed  to  a  living  rill,  and  instead  of  the 
flaming  lake  beyond  there  are  only  lilies  growing. 

Sense  is  of  course  somewhat  disconcerted  by  this  chaugo 
of  the  scene. 

"  For  lakes  of  pain,  }'on  pleasant  plain 

Of  woods  and  grass  and  yellow  grain 

Doth  ravish  the  soul  and  sense  ; 


444  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

And  never  a  sigh  beneath  the  sky, 
And  folk  that  smile  and  gaze  above." 

Such  a  transformation  Love  has  wrought  by  his  mere 
coining,  and  in  his  unconsciousness  he  also  wonders. 

"  Then  Love  rode  round,  and  searched  the  ground, 
The  caves  below,  the  hills  above  ; 
'  But  I  cannot  find  where  thou  hast  found  — 
Hell ! '  quoth  Love." 

Hereupon,  however,  Sense  having  failed,  the  other  minis 
ter  is  appealed  to :  — 

M  There,  while  they  stood  in  a  green  wood 
And  marveled  still  on  111  and  Good, 
Came  suddenly  Minister  Mind. 
'In  the  heart  of  sin  doth  hell  begin  : 
'Tis  not  below,  'tis  not  above, 
It  lieth  within,  it  lieth  within  : ' 
(«  Where  ?  '  quoth  Love.) 

44 '  I  saw  a  man  sit  by  a  corse  ; 

Hell 's  in  the  murderer's  breast :  remorse  ! ' 

Thus  clamored  his  mind  to  his  mind  ; 
Not  fleshly  dole  is  the  sinner's  goal, 
'  Hell 's  not  below,  nor  yet  above, 
'T  is  fixed  in  the  ever  damned  soul '  — 
'  Fixed  ? '  quoth  Love. 

"'Fixed  :  follow  me,  would'st  thou  but  see 
He  weepeth  under  yon  willow  tree, 

Fast  chained  to  his  corse  ! '  quoth  Mind. 
Full  soon  they  passed,  for  they  rode  fast, 
Where  the  piteous  willow  bent  above. 
'  Now  shall  I  see  at  last,  at  last, 
Hell,'  quoth  Love. 

"  There  when  they  came  Mind  suffered  shame  ! 
*  These  be  the  same  and  not  the  same  ; ' 

A-wondering  whispered  Mind. 
Lo,  face  by  face  two  spirits  pace 
Where  the  blissful  willow  waves  above  : 
One  saith  :  '  Do  me  a  friendly  grace  —  * 
('  Grace  ! '  quoth  Love.) 


OPTIMISM,    PESSIMISM,   AND   THE   MORAL  ORDER.        445 

"'  Raad  me  two  dreams  that  linger  long, 
Dim  as  returns  of  old-time  song, 
That  flicker  about  the  mind. 
I  dreamed  (how  deep  in  mortal  sleep  !) 
I  struck  thee  dead,  then  stood  above 
With  tears  that  none  but  dreamers  weep  ; ' 
'  Dreams,'  quoth  Love. 

" '  In  dreams,  again,  I  plucked  a  flower 

That  clung  with  pain  and  stung  with  power, 

Yea,  nettled  me,  body  and  mind. 
'T  was  the  nettle  of  sin,  't  was  medicine  ; 
No  need  nor  seed  of  it  here  Above  ; 
In  dreams  of  Hate  true  Loves  begin.' 

'  True,'  quoth  Love. 

*  *  Now  strange,'  quoth  Sense,  and  '  Strange,'  quoth  Mind ; 
4  We  saw  it,  and  yet 't  is  hard  to  find, 

—  But  we  saw  it,'  quoth  Sense  and  Mind. 
*  Stretched  on  the  ground,  beautiful  crowned 
Of  the  piteous  willow  that  wreathed  above,' 
'  But  I  cannot  find  where  ye  have  found 
Hell,'  quoth  Love." 

Once  more,  then,  Love  fails,  you  see,  since  even  as  he 
approached  Remorse,  too,  has  fled.  Thus  Lanier  depicted 
Love  as  wandering  in  his  own  universe.  Mind  and 
Sense  find  all  sorts  of  mischief  there,  but  they  cannot 
show  such  things  to  their  master.  Abiding  is  only  the 
ideal ;  evil  is  but  the  illusion. 

Here,  then,  is  an  embodiment,  —  in  extreme  form  to  be 
sure,  but  in  a  form  that  you  will  recognize,  —  of  that  mod- 
ern faith  which,  in  curious  contrast  to  the  prevalent  agnos- 
ticism of  our  age,  defends  the  spiritual  in  the  world  by 
denying  the  very  existence  of  evil.  I  need  hardly  tell 
you  more  at  length  how  to  many  minds  such  a  doctrine 
contains  the  very  deepest  essence  of  religion.  In  such  a 
world,  think  they,  we  can  make  easy  work  of  demonstrat- 
ing the  immortality  of  the  soul,  the  final  restoration  of 
all  things,  the  unreality  of  Satan,  the  triumph  of  every 


446  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

good  cause,  in  short,  the  gracious  perfection  which  is  hid- 
den behind  every  apparent  and  illusory  evil  of  life.  To 
such  persons  thus  to  deny  ill  is  to  have  spiritual  insight, 
and  Love  is  indeed  ignorant  of  hell  just  because  Love 
knows  all  things.  I  do  not  know  how  far  Lanier  regarded 
this  as  a  final  doctrine.  But  let  us  for  the  moment  treat 
it  as  such,  and  draw  further  conclusions  for  which  he  is 
indeed  not  responsible. 

Extremely  characteristic  of  the  mood  of  such  religious 
optimism  is  in  many  minds  a  dread  of  the  natural  order 
as  science  knows  it.  Your  optimist  of  this  type,  if  he 
devotes  himself  to  political  theorizing,  has  a  peculiarly 
violent  dislike  for  economic  facts.  To  his  mind  there  are 
no  evils  in  society  except  competition  and  poverty,  which 
will  both  cease  so  soon  as  we  by  chance  fall  to  loving  one 
another,  and  to  owning  the  property  of  the  nation  in 
common.  Crime  is  not  a  result  of  anything  deep  in  human 
nature  ;  selfishness  is  a  mere  incident  of  a  defective  social 
system.  With  fewer  hours  of  labor,  we  should  have  many 
times  the  spirituality  that  we  now  have.  Sin  is  not  only 
mere  ignorance ;  it  is  something  still  more  limited ;  it  is 
mere  ignorance  of  the  proper  theory  of  the  functions  of 
government.  Satan  is  mainly  an  invention  of  false  theories 
in  political  economy.  A  single  tax  system,  or  a  national- 
ized labor  army,  would  end  the  sorrows  of  mankind,  and 
make  us  all  artists  and  patriots.  The  end  of  human  woe 
is  n't  far  off  ;  the  day  of  the  Lord  is  at  hand. 

The  day  of  the  Lord  is  in  fact,  in  one  form  or  another, 
the  favorite  hope  of  these  romantic  optimists.  Evil  being 
only  an  illusion,  the  spiritual  powers  being  in  complete 
ownership  of  the  entire  world,  there  is  no  reason  why  any 
day  the  scene  of  our  sorrow  should  not  be  entirely  trans- 
formed. In  the  hope  of  such  transformation  the  faithful 
wait  and  trust.  Meanwhile  they  expect  little  help  from 
mere  science,  which  once  for  all  deals  with  the  world  of 
mind  and  of  sense  in  a  lower  sphere.  The  truth  of  the 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND   THE   MORAL   ORDER.        447 

spirit  is  not  plain  to  the  natural  man  ;  the  faithful  rather 
pray  to  the  Lord  that  such  an  one's  eyes  may  be  opened, 
so  that  he  may  see  the  chariots  of  the  Lord  all  about  him. 
Then  he  will  believe  in  his  immortal  destiny,  he  will  for- 
sake remorse,  gloom,  dread,  yes,  even  strenuousness  itself. 
Spirituality,  after  all,  is  n't  a  very  strenuous  thing.  That 
is  n't  its  true  quality.  It  rather  blesseth  him  that  gives 
and  him  that  takes.  In  the  world  of  the  divine  love  all 
is  well. 

m. 

But  now  is  this,  after  all,  a  truly  spiritual  doctrine  of 
the  world  ?  Is  this  the  notion  of  life  and  its  problems 
to  which  a  genuine  idealism  leads  us  ?  I  confess  that  I 
do  not  think  so ;  I  hold  rather  that  Love,  in  Sidney  La- 
nier's  vision,  was  rather  the  deluded  one,  or,  if  you  like, 
the  deceiver  ;  I  hold  that  good  is  the  final  goal  of  ill  in  a 
wholly  different  sense,  and  that  the  gravity  of  the  issues 
of  the  spiritual  world  is  one  which  no  one  is  fitted  to  under- 
stand until  he  has  once  fairly  comprehended  the  sense 
and  the  bitterness  of  such  a  pessimism  as  even  that  of 
Schopenhauer  himself.  For  a  true  pessimism,  not  as  the 
last  word  of  wisdom,  but  as  an  element  of  the  true  doc- 
trine, is  as  much  a  moment  in  genuine  spirituality  as 
tragedy  is  a  part  of  the  fortune  of  true  love.  Even  in 
Lanier's  poem  Love  had  felt  heart-pain,  and  needed  heal- 
ing. Evil  is  not  a  dream,  but  a  bitter  truth,  which  we 
make  spiritual  by  conquering  it.  And  as  for  the  day  of 
the  Lord,  as  for  the  moment  when  the  divinely  grave 
meaning,  the  genuine  spirituality,  of  the  world  dawns 
upon  man's  comprehension,  the  first  of  the  great  prophets 
whose  literary  remains  have  come  down  to  us  from  the 
days  of  ancient  Israel  fully  expressed  the  essential  fact 
concerning  that  experience  when  he  said  to  the  optimists 
of  his  time  :  "  Woe  unto  you  that  desire  the  day  of  the 
Lord  !  To  what  end  is  it  for  you  ?  The  day  of  the  Lord 


448  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

is  darkness,  and  not  light.  As  if  a  man  did  flee  from  a 
lion,  and  a  bear  met  him ;  or  went  into  the  house,  and 
It-aiied  his  hand  on  the  wall,  and  a  serpent  bit  him." 

I  assure  you  in  all  earnestness,  speaking  as  an  idealist, 
as  one  who  longs  to  have  men  recognize  the  spiritual  order, 
to  believe  in  the  supremacy  of  the  good  in  this  our  world, 
to  rise  above  sense,  and  to  feel  secure  of  the  rationality  cf 
the  universe,  —  speaking  thus,  I  still  regard  as  one  of 
the  most  lamentable  and  disheartening  features  in  our 
modern  life  the  dreary  opposition  between  those  who, 
studying  the  order  of  nature  as  science  shows  it,  remain 
agnostic  about  the  spiritual  realities  of  the  world,  and 
those  who,  on  the  other  hand,  believing,  as  they  say,  in  a 
divine  order,  remain  gently  optimistic,  and  refuse  to  look 
at  the  woes  and  horrors  of  the  world  of  Darwin  and  of 
science,  because  forsooth,  since  the  Lord  reigns,  all  must 
be  right  with  the  world.  Thus  on  the  one  hand  we  have 
a  romantic  idealism  that  loves,  with  false  liberalism,  to 
cheapen  religious  faith  by  ignoring  all  the  graver  dogmas 
of  the  traditional  creeds,  that  invents,  meanwhile,  social 
Utopias,  that  denies  the  profound  waywardness  and  wick- 
edness of  human  nature,  and  that  refuses  to  grapple  by 
the  throat  the  real  ills  of  life ;  while  on  the  other  hand 
we  have  an  agnosticism  that  refuses  to  believe  in  the  spir- 
itual, because  once  for  all  there  is  so  much  mischief  in  the 
phenomenal  order  of  nature.  A  genuine  synthesis  of  this 
optimism  and  its  opposing  pessimism,  a  spiritual  idealism 
that  does  not  deny  the  reality  and  the  gravity  of  evil,  a 
religion  that  looks  forward  to  the  day  of  the  Lord  as  to 
something  very  great  and  therefore  very  serious,  and  that 
accepts  life  as  something  valuable  enough  to  be  tragic 
•—  this  is  what  we  need. 

In  human  history  the  schoolmaster  to  bring  us  to  the 
higher  sense  of  what  a  genuine  idealism  means  has  al- 
ways been  just  that  bitter  sense  of  the  unreality  and 
vanity  of  religious  optimism  which  Amos  so  fervently 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND   THE  MORAL   ORDER.       449 

expressed,  and  which  for  other  thinkers,  for  a  Voltaire  or 
for  a  Swift,  has  frequently  taken  either  the  form  of  a 
skeptical  assault  upon  all  faith  in  the  supremacy  of  the 
good  in  the  universe,  or  else  the  shape  of  a  cynical  despair 
which,  at  all  events  in  man's  nature,  could  find  no  encour- 
aging feature.  The  difficulties  of  religious  optimism  are 
indeed  manifold  enough.  If  all  is  ordered  for  the  best  in 
the  best  of  possible  worlds,  if,  in  the  presence  of  the 
divine  love,  even  the  hell  of  remorse  itself  ceases  to  exist, 
if  what  is  called  sin  is  a  mere  medicine  of  the  soul,  a  net- 
tle that  stings  a  trifle,  in  order  that  we  may  be  the  better 
spiritually  for  the  experience,  if  in  a  higher  state  we  shall 
see  that  there  was  positively  nothing  to  lament  in  this 
mortal  life,  then  indeed  the  whole  universe  of  action  loses 
its  gravity  and  its  earnestness.  Why  should  I  not  sin, 
since  sin  also  is  an  illusion  ?  Why  not  experience  the 
sting  of  the  nettle  of  crime,  since  that  also  is  a  medicine? 
If  all  is  well,  what  is  there  to  resist,  to  conquer,  to 
change,  to  meet  courageously,  to  regret,  to  avoid  ?  If 
divine  wisdom  is  present  equally  in  the  highest  and  the 
lowest,  equally  in  the  good  and  in  the  ill,  then  why  resist 
the  unreal  evil  ?  Whatever  I  am  God  chooses  me,  and 
surely  not  as  a  vessel  of  wrath,  for  there  is  no  wrath  in 
him  at  all,  only  gentleness,  love,  peace. 

I  need  not  dwell  on  such  difficulties  of  the  optimistic 
scheme.  In  its  spirituality,  as  you  see,  it  is  in  danger  of 
becoming  out  and  out  immoral.  Nor  need  I  point  out 
how,  along  with  the  study  of  the  empirical  facts  which 
show  us  the  world  full  of  apparent  ills  all  about  us,  these 
fundamental  difficulties  of  optimism  have  led  many  to 
abandon  altogether  the  hope  of  vindicating  for  any  spir- 
itual order  a  supremacy  in  our  world.  And,  in  fact,  for 
those  who,  like  myself,  accept  a  general  idealistic  scheme 
of  things  there  would  seem  at  first  sight  to  be  no  resource 
open,  but  either  a  resigned  acceptance  of  the  divine  order 
as  something  to  be  conceived  only  in  mystical  terms,  of 
else  a  consent  to  such  a  pessimism  as  Schopenhauer's. 


450  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

The  first  resource  here,  to  wit,  mystical  resignation, 
which  once  for  all  accepts  the  divine  order  as  real  and 
supreme,  which  still  admits  that  the  finite  world  is  full  of 
evil,  and  which  then  solves  its  problem  by  simply  refus- 
ing to  face  it,  and  by  surrendering  all  clear  thought  in 
favor  of  a  rapt  and  helpless  adoration  of  God,  —  this  re- 
source is  already  known  to  us  from  our  study  of  Spinoza, 
and,  still  better,  of  the  "  Imitation."  Your  mystic  is  never 
an  optimist  of  the  type  suggested  in  Sidney  Lanier's 
poem.  He  rather  loves  to  dwell  on  the  miseries  of  the 
finite  life.  These  are  for  him  perfectly  real  miseries. 
The  source  of  them,  however,  is  simply  our  own  absorp- 
tion in  our  finitude.  Why  the  divine  order  permits  us  to 
become  thus  absorbed  is  never  clear,  nor  can  it  be  made 
clear  for  the  mystic.  It  is  God  who  knows,  not  I,  why  I 
am  thus  imprisoned  in  the  fatal  misery  of  my  finite  igno- 
rance. What  he  means  by  letting  me  become  finite  is 
utterly  mysterious.  I  submit  to  this,  as  to  everything 
else:  — 

"  The  Ball  no  question  makes  of  Ayes  and  Noes, 
But  Here  or  There  as  strikes  the  Player  goes  ; 
And  he  that  toss'd  you  down  into  the  Field, 
He  knows  about  it  all  —  He  knows  —  He  knows." 

The  divine  wisdom  is  existent  for  itself,  not  for  me.  It  is 
remote,  foreign,  impenetrable,  so  long  indeed  as  I  remain 
finite.  If  I  consent  to  lose  myself  indeed,  there  may 
come  moments  of  ecstasy,  when  I  shall,  as  it  were  at  the 
moment  of  my  vanishing,  seem  to  catch  a  glimpse  of 
God's  meaning.  But  the  glimpse  will  mean  little ;  it  will 
be  inexpressible,  a  divine  suggestion,  with  no  bearings 
upon  practical  life  in  this  world. 

Are  we  now,  as  idealists,  condemned  to  such  a  mysti- 
cism as  this  ?  If  we  are,  is  not  the  way  indeed  a  short  one 
to  Schopenhauer's  pessimism  ?  In  fact,  all  the  three  views 
of  life  that  we  have  just  been  considering  are  not  so 
remote  from  one  another  in  their  oppositions  as  might 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND   THE   MORAL   ORDER.        451 

seem  at  first  sight  to  be  the  case.  The  fact  is  that  the 
finite  world  is  full  of  at  least  apparent  evils.  Religious 
optimism  of  the  simple-minded  sort  simply  denies  their 
actual  existence.  God's  perfection,  it  says,  excludes 
them.  They  are  n't  anything  positive.  They  are  essen- 
tially unreal.  All  is  light  and  clear  when  viewed  from 
above.  The  ills  of  life,  including  even  the  crimes  of  the 
world  of  sense,  vanish  from  God's  point  of  view.  Mysti- 
cal resignation,  on  the  contrary,  while  asserting  that  the 
evils  of  life  have  a  genuine  existence,  deprives  them  of 
any  significant  place  in  the  divine  order  as  such.  The 
evils  are,  for  the  mystic,  once  more  illusions,  only  so  long 
as  you  remain  in  the  finite  world  they  are  necessary  illu- 
sions. God,  too,  knows  them  to  be  here  in  our  finite 
world,  doubtless  even  wills  them  to  be  here,  so  long  as  we 
remain  remote  from  absorption  in  him.  The  sins  in- 
separable from  our  finite  existence  are  imposed  upon  us 
as  the  penalties  of  our  consenting  to  remain  apart  from 
him.  The  difference  between  these  two  views  is,  that,  on 
the  one  hand,  for  the  believer  in  Sidney  Lanier's  con- 
quest of  divine  Love,  the  higher  insight  brings  with  it  to 
the  finite  beings  a  certain  joy  in  their  very  finitude,  a 
delight  in  their  own  past  sins,  in  these  experiences  that 
have  proved  a  medicine  to  them.  This  joy  seems  to  make 
them  content  with  the  flowers  and  caresses  of  their  world. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  mystical  resignation  never  sees  in 
the  finite  world  anything  but  dust  and  ashes,  and  to  the 
end  turns  from  it  scornfully  to  God,  who  is  the  only 
good.  Yet  the  two  views  agree  in  this,  that  they  both 
alike  deprive  the  finite  world  of  all  gravity  and  of  all 
deeper  ethical  significance.  What  we  do  here,  our  work, 
our  purposes,  our  problems,  our  doubts,  our  battles,  all 
these  things  have  for  the  mystic  as  for  the  optimist  no 
essential  meaning.  There  are  no  issues  in  the  finite 
world  for  either  view.  And  this  idea,  that  just  because 
there  are  no  true  issues  in  the  finite  world,  just  because 


452  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

there  is  no  gravity  about  it,  nothing  stern,  nothing  worthy 
of  a  good  fight,  no  salvation  that  may  be  lost,  and  is  hard 
to  win,  no  significant  toil  that  ought  to  be  entered  upon 
and  that  is  calling  for  us  with  the  voice  of  a  positive  duty 
—  that  just  because  of  all  this  our  life  is  essentially  vain ; 
what  is  such  an  idea  but  the  very  essence  of  pessimism 
itself  ?  Pessimism,  then,  the  sense  of  the  utter  vanity  of 
life,  is  the  necessary  outcome  of  every  half-hearted  scheme 
of  the  moral  order,  of  every  scheme  which  says  you  can 
escape  the  evils  of  finitude,  if  at  all,  only  in  case  you  can 
find  some  way  to  deny  their  existence.  For  the  fact  is 
that  from  every  such  half-hearted  scheme  of  the  moral 
order  we  return  to  the  facts  of  life  themselves.  There 
they  are,  our  ills  and  our  sins  —  denying  does  not  destroy 
them,  calling  them  illusions  does  not  remove  them,  de- 
claring them  utterly  insignificant  only  makes  all  the  more 
hollow  and  empty  the  life  of  which  they  are  an  organic 
part.  If,  then,  the  only  escape  of  our  philosophy  rrom  the 
individual  ills  of  life  lies  in  denying  their  significance,  and 
so  the  significance  of  this  whole  seeming  world  whereof 
they  are  a  part,  then  indeed  are  we  of  all  men  most  mis- 
erable. For  our  life  is  in  this  world.  And  if  the  world 
of  experience  is  only  a  vain  show,  then  the  last  word  is  a 
sense  of  the  utter  illusoriness  and  insignificance  of  the 
issues  of  life  which  is  the  very  essence  of  pessimism. 

Or  once  more,  to  put  the  matter  more  concretely :  If 
one  who  had  long  been  toiling  courageously  up  the  steep 
and  narrow  path  of  virtue,  fighting  sin  after  sin,  doing 
good  as  it  was  given  him,  aiming  in  his  little  way  for  the 
victory  of  righteousness  in  the  finite  world,  if  such  an 
one,  I  say,  has  suddenly  revealed  to  him  as  a  truth  the 
substance  of  Lanier's  vision  of  all-conquering  Love,  who 
wins  not  by  warfare  with  ill,  but  by  a  simple  ignoring  of 
ill,  in  whose  presence  crimes  become  the  medicine  of  the 
soul,  and  hatreds  the  germs  of  the  glorified  friendships  of 
free  spirits  —  will  not  your  moral  hero  of  the  finite  world, 


OPTIMISM,    PESSIMISM,   AND   THE     MORAL    ORDER.      453 

scarred  with  his  long  warfare,  worn  with  toils  and  sor- 
rows, a  patient  servant  of  the  good  cause  which  as  he 
fondly  had  hoped  needed  him  —  will  he  not  see  the  cheat 
and  delusion  of  all  his  warfare  ?  What  vainer  than  the 
conflict  with  all  the  powers  of  hell,  when  there  are  no 
such  powers  ?  Will  he  not  say  of  us  all  in  a  new  and 
bitter  sense :  — 

"  'T  is  we  who  wrapt  in  gloomy  visions  keep 
With  phantoms  an  unprofitable  strife  "  ? 

Nay,  what  shall  it  profit  us  that  after  the  manner  of  men 
we  have  fought  wild  beasts  at  Ephesus?  There  are  no 
wild  beasts,  you  see.  It  was  all  a  dream,  our  morality. 
This  optimistic  awakening,  —  could  any  irony  of  fate 
seem  to  us  more  bitter  ?  We  have  offered  our  little  all  to 
virtue,  and  the  offering  was  vain ;  for  in  the  world  of 
truth  there  was  no  offering  to  bring  to  virtue.  Thus  the 
whole  moral  conduct  of  finite  beings  proves  to  be  based 
upon  as  irrational  a  striving  as  that  which  makes  Scho- 
penhauer call  the  blind  world-will  so  worthless  a  thing.  If 
the  mystical  interpretation  of  life  be  the  right  one,  if  tlv> 
finite  world  is  indeed  simply  banished  from  God,  and  has 
no  share  in  him  except  at  the  moment  when  it  denies 
itself,  the  pessimistic  result  is  once  more  the  plain  one. 
All  these  half-hearted  views,  in  their  endless  dialectic, 
resolve  themselves  into  the  same  vanity. 

And  yet  they  are  not  without  worth  —  these  partial 
insights  —  as  approaches  to  the  truth.  When  religious 
optimism  declares  the  joyous  divine  love  to  be  all-conquer- 
ing and  omnipresent,  it  is  trying  to  express  a  truth.  Dis- 
satisfied with  his  eternal  world  the  divine  Self  cannot  be. 
It  is  only  in  the  temporal  world  that  from  moment  to 
moment,  as  the  drama  changes,  there  is  of  necessity  rest- 
lessness, evil,  strife,  and  therefore  a  serious  business  in- 
volved. That  the  evil  also,  however  real  to  the  finite 
being,  however  lamentable  or  hateful  from  the  finite  point 


454  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

of  view,  has  its  place  in  the  perfection  of  the  Self,  this  13 
what  optimism  means,  and  in  so  far  it  is  right.  The 
truth  in  fact  will  lie  somehow  in  a  synthesis  of  all  these 
points  of  view,  for  all  three  have  a  certain  relative  valid- 
ity. The  genuine  moral  order  must  contain  that  "per- 
fection in  imperfection  "  which  Browning,  in  his  best  and 
most  vital  poems,  was  always  striving  to  describe  to  us. 
Thus  constituted  it  must  be  indeed  problematic,  even  as 
the  mystics  make  it,  and  tragic,  even  as  the  pessimists 
declare  it,  but  also  somehow  perfect  just  as  optimism 
dreams. 

IV. 

Can  we  now  suggest,  from  an  idealistic  point  of  view, 
how  the  world  of  the  one  Self  can  be  thus  at  once  a  world 
of  moral  issues,  and  a  world  of  moral  completeness ;  a 
world  of  goodness,  and  yet  a  world  where  evil  has  its  genu- 
ine place  ;  a  world  of  restless  spirituality,  where  at  every 
moment  of  time  there  is  something  for  moral  agents  to  do, 
and  a  world  of  supreme  triumph,  where  the  spirit  eter- 
nally rests  from  his  labors  ?  All  these  things,  apparently, 
a  moral  order  which  is  to  be  at  once  divine  in  its  perfec- 
tion so  that  we  can  worship  it,  and  great  in  its  needs 
so  that  our  life  may  not  be  vain  as  we  try  to  serve  the 
good  —  all  these  paradoxically  opposed  qualities  a  moral 
order  must  contain.  Is  it  conceivable  that  they  should 
be  reconciled  ?  Is  not  the  very  attempt  an  absurdity  ?  I 
answer  that,  on  the  contrary,  if  you  look  at  the  matter 
fairly,  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  idealist's  inter- 
pretation of  life,  nothing  is  more  possible  than  just  such 
an  union  of  the  apparently  conflicting  requirements  of  the 
religious  conception  of  the  world. 

Consider,  then,  that  more  familiar  problem  of  practical 
and  daily  life  with  whose  philosophical  bearings  our  his- 
torical study  of  Hegel  and  of  Schopenhauer  has  now 
made  us  acquainted.  All  living,  in  the  first  place,  how* 
ever  commonplace  its  aims,  however  accidental  its  ideals, 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND   THE   MORAL   ORDER.        455 

involves  a  deep  paradox.  We  long  to  live.  Very  well, 
then,  we  long  to  be  active.  For  life  means  activity  ;  and 
activity,  that  again  means  longing,  striving,  suffering 
lack,  hoping  for  the  end  of  the  activity  in  which  we  are 
immediately  engaged.  This  is  the  essence  of  living,  just 
as  Schopenhauer  said.  Life  is  will ;  and  every  will  aims 
at  its  own  completion,  that  is,  at  its  own  cessation.  I  will 
to  be  wiser  than  I  am.  Well,  then,  I  will  that  my  present 
foolishness  shall  cease.  I  will  to  get  somebody's  love  j 
and  that  means  that  I  will  the  cessation  of  my  unloved 
condition.  Every  will  aims  at  the  attainment  of  its 
desire ;  and  attainment  is  the  death  of  just  this  desire, 
aud  so  of  just  this  act  of  will.  And  yet,  on  the  whole,  I 
will  to  live.  I  will  then  that  which  will  always  be  in  one 
sense  a  longing  for  its  own  cessation ;  I  will  to  suffer 
lack ;  I  desire  to  be  always  desiring.  My  highest  good, 
then,  whatever  my  life,  will  always  have  this  tinge  of  bit- 
terness about  it,  will  always  be  a  restless,  longing,  suffer- 
ing good.  Hegel  saw  this  paradox,  declared  it  to  be  the 
very  essence  of  spirituality,  gloried  in  it,  and  founded  his 
whole  system  on  the  paradoxical  logic  of  passion.  Scho- 
penhauer saw  the  same  truth  in  another  light,  and  aban- 
doned hope  in  life  because  of  the  universality  of  this 
truth.  As  for  us,  we  have  found  reason  to  side  in  this 
one  respect  rather  with  Hegel.  The  life  that  we  seek  in 
this  world  cannot  be  colorlessly  perfect.  At  the  very  low- 
est estimate  of  its  seriousness  it  has  the  worth  and  the 
risk  of  the  game  about  it.  We  win  only  by  risking  de- 
feat ;  we  have  our  courage  only  by  conquering  our  fear ; 
we  can  triumph  in  life  only  by  transcending  the  pains  of 
risk  and  of  conflict  even  while  they  are  in  us  and  part 
of  us.  Well,  if  this  be  so  in  other  sorts  of  life,  may  it 
not  also  be  so  in  the  moral  life  ?  Sin  is  moral  defeat, 
and  is  therefore  indeed  a  part  of  a  world  where  there  is 
serious  moral  effort,  just  as  lost  games  are  part  of  the 
world  of  every  earnest  player.  Imagine,  then,  tliat  the 


456  THE  SPIKIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

infinite  Self,  in  the  unity  of  his  eternal  life,  wills  a  com« 
plete  moral  consciousness.  Must  not  this  consciousness 
express  itself  in  a  world  of  finite  persons,  each  one  of 
whom  is  limited  enough  not  merely  to  strive  and  suffer, 
but  also  to  be  in  danger  of  sin?  Many  of  these  moral 
agents,  then,  will  sin,  will  fail  in  the  conflict  of  life. 
Their  errors  will  not  be  unreal ;  their  remorse  will  not  be 
an  illusion.  But  in  the  spiritual  tragedy  of  the  world  as 
known  to  the  divine  perfection  their  failure  will  have  the 
share  that  bitterness  and  sorrow  always  have  in  the  life 
of  the  stern  and  earnest  will.  Or,  once  again,  to  make 
this  notion  of  the  moral  world  clearer,  remember  that,  as 
we  saw  at  the  last  time,  the  infinite  Self,  looking  at  the 
world  in  its  entirety,  must  contain,  must  include,  must 
consciously  possess  its  whole  spiritual  world,  as  the  musi- 
cal consciousness,  in  its  estimate  of  the  succession  of 
sounds,  contains  not  merely  the  single  notes,  not  merely 
the  chords  as  they  come  singly  in  time,  but  the  whole 
symphony,  whose  dissonances  may  thus  be  moments  in  the 
eternal  perfection  of  the  whole.  Regarded  temporally, 
music,  which,  as  Schopenhauer  suggested,  does  in  this 
respect  resemble  the  whole  life  of  the  will,  is  restless,  in- 
satiable, unable  to  give  you  any  perfection  at  any  single 
moment  of  its  progress.  Everything  it  gets  only  to  flee 
from  its  own  attainment.  And  even  the  final  chords 
which  its  striving  reaches  in  any  composition  would  be 
worthless  if  alone.  Yet  this  finite  and  temporal  imper- 
fection, this  restless  flight  from  every  note,  every  melody, 
every  chord,  every  chord-sequence,  constitutes  the  indwell- 
ing perfection  of  the  whole  work.  Mozart,  as  you  may 
know,  used  to  say,  in  words  which  the  German  philoso- 
pher Von  Hartmann  has  very  significantly  quoted,  that 
the  blessedest  moment  of  his  artistic  production  was  the 
one  wherein  this  significance  of  his  whole  composition 
came  home  to  him  in  one  instant,  wherein  as  it  were  he 
transcended  time,  and  possessed  all  the  succession  of  rest- 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,    AND   THE   MORAL   ORDER.        457 

less  musical  strivings  in  one  artistic  glance.  "  My  ideas," 
says,  in  substance,  Mozart,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  "  come 
as  they  will,  I  don't  know  how,  all  in  a  stream.  If  I  like 
them  I  keep  them  in  my  head,  and  people  say  that  I  often 
hum  them  over  to  myself.  Well,  if  I  can  hold  on  to  them, 
they  begin  to  join  on  to  one  another,  as  if  they  were  bits 
that  a  pastry  cook  should  joint  together  in  his  pantry. 
And  now  my  soul  gets  heated,  and  if  nothing  disturbs  me 
the  piece  grows  larger  and  brighter  until,  however  long  it 
is,  it  is  all  finished  at  once  in  my  mind,  so  that  I  can  see 
it  at  a  glance  as  if  it  were  a  pretty  picture  or  a  pleasing 
person.  Then  I  don't  hear  the  notes  one  after  another, 
as  they  are  hereafter  to  be  played,  but  it  is  as  if  in  my 
fancy  they  were  all  at  once.  And  that  is  a  revel  (das  ist 
nun  ein  Schmaus).  While  I  'm  inventing,  it  all  seems  to 
me  like  a  fine  vivid  dream ;  but  that  hearing  it  all  at  once 
(when  the  invention  is  done),  that 's  the  best.  What  I 
have  once  so  heard  I  forget  not  again,  and  perhaps  this  is 
the  best  gift  that  God  has  granted  me." 

Well,  such  non-temporal  grasping  of  the  significance  of 
a  restless  temporal  progress,  we  must  indeed  attribute,  as 
we  have  seen,  to  the  Self  in  whom  our  logical  analysis 
found  the  realization  of  all  truth.  The  truth  of  time 
must  be  seen  by  the  absolute  Knower,  as  Mozart  saw  his 
whole  compositions.  For  that  is,  not  the  dream,  but  the 
technically  defensible  result  which  our  idealism  has  forced 
upon  us.  If  what  we  have  to  call  the  infinite  past  and 
future  have  even  at  this  instant  a  genuine  truth,  so  that 
of  any  moment  in  the  past  or  in  the  future  there  is  only 
one  of  two  contradictory  assertions  now  true,  then  the  infi- 
nite Self  to  whom  I  appeal  when  I  talk  of  past  and  future 
must,  in  the  eternal  sense,  grasp  and  possess  the  whole  of 
time.  After  this  fashion,  then,  the  very  paradox  may  be 
realized  by  his  consciousness  which  we  are  now  seeking 
to  explain,  the  paradox  of  a  world  where,  in  the  individ- 
ual moments  of  life,  there  is  indeed  evil,  dissonance, 


458  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY 

tragedy,  restlessness,  imperfection,  where  the  struggle 
with  these  things  is  not  illusory,  and  where  the  value  of 
the  whole  does  not  come,  as  in  Sidney  Lanier's  dream, 
through  an  abolition  of  the  knowledge  of  individual  ills, 
through  an  ignoring  of  evil,  whether  physical  or  moral, 
but  rather  through  an  eternal  insight  into  the  value  of 
the  entire  restless  life  of  the  whole  temporal  world. 

But  perhaps  you  may  say  that  such  a  vindication  as  thia 
of  the  perfection  of  the  divine  order  does  not,  after  all, 
sufficiently  do  justice  to  the  gravity  of  the  moral  world. 
The  moral  world,  as  experience  shows  it  to  us,  is  not 
a  symphony,  nor  anything  else  artistic,  but  either  it  is  a 
world  of  moral  agony,  of  crime,  of  darkness,  as  Amos 
said,  and  not  of  light,  or  else  our  conscience,  in  condemn- 
ing sin  as  absolutely  hateful,  is  wrong.  Conscience  de- 
clares that  moral  evil  simply  ought  not  to  exist.  Moral 
evil  is  n't  a  mere  dissonance  in  the  world-symphony,  any 
more  than  it  is,  as  Sidney  Lanier's  optimistic  dream  made 
it,  a  gentle  medicine  for  the  soul.  Sin  is  through  and 
through  regrettable,  diabolical.  It  ought  not  to  exist. 
No  contrast  of  temporal  and  eternal  will  save  us  here. 
So,  in  its  stern  hatred  of  the  wrong,  our  moral  conscious- 
ness seems  to  declare.  Can  our  idealism  aid  us  in  recon- 
ciling the  divine  perfection  with  such  dissonances,  with 
such  paradoxes  as  these  of  the  moral  world  ? 

Well,  I  admit,  indeed,  that  it  is  very  hard  to  formulate 
the  truth  as  to  this  problem  without  giving  it  the  false 
accent.  Yet,  after  all,  we  have  now  in  our  hands  all  the 
elements  that  are  necessary  for  a  genuine  solution  of  the 
problem  of  the  existence  of  sin,  in  so  far,  at  least,  as  it 
is  related  to  the  consciousness  of  the  sinner  himself. 
Spiritual  evil  has,  to  be  sure,  other  aspects  that  will  need 
yet  more  study. 

Sin,  says  our  moral  consciousness,  is  utterly  hateful, 
and  ought  not  to  exist  in  a  perfect  world.  If  our  moral 
consciousness  is  wrong  in  asserting  this,  then  one  appar- 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,  AND  THE  MORAL  ORDER.       459 

ently  returns  to  Lanier's  superficial  optimism.  Evil  is 
only  illusory.  But  in  that  case,  as  we  saw,  the  world 
utterly  loses  deeper  significance.  If,  however,  moral  evil, 
as  it  exists  in  the  sinner's  soul,  is  not  illusory,  then  how 
can  the  divine  order  be  at  once  good  and  triumphant,  in  a 
world  where  there  is  so  much  sin  ?  The  answer  is  sug- 
gested to  us  by  a  consideration  not  now  of  sin  as  such, 
but  of  latent  sin,  namely,  of  temptation.  In  the  world  of 
our  own  acts  we  have  an  experience  which  is  very  enlight- 
ening as  to  the  paradoxical  constitution  of  the  whole 
moral  world.  Only  the  tempted,  as  we  saw  when  we 
studied  Hegel's  doctrine,  —  only  the  tempted  can  be  holy. 
For  instance,  if  I  find  in  myself  an  evil  impulse,  I  find 
what  in  itself  considered  is,  indeed,  something  hateful, 
lamentable,  possibly  horrible,  something  which  regarded 
for  itself  can  apparently  form  no  part  of  a  good  order. 
If  I  tolerate  the  impulse,  if  I  declare  it  to  be  just  the  nettle 
of  sin,  if  I  call  its  evil  illusory,  then  my  moral  optimism 
is  indeed  open  to  the  condemnation  of  Amos,  who  cries 
woe  upon  all  such  vindications  of  the  divine  order.  But 
suppose  I  resist  the  evil  impulse,  hate  it,  hold  it  down, 
overcome  it,  then,  in  this  moment  of  hating  and  condemn- 
ing it  /  make  it  a  part  of  my  larger  moral  goodness. 
The  justification  of  the  existence  of  my  evil  impulse  comes 
just  at  the  instant  when  I  hate  and  condemn  it.  Con- 
demning and  conquering  the  evil  will  makes  it  part  of  a 
good  will.  Here  is  the  paradox  of  all  will  stated  not  now 
in  artistic  but  in  moral  terms.  There  are  elements  in  a 
good  world  which,  individually  regarded,  ought  not  to  be 
there,  which  are  in  themselves  hateful,  regrettable,  the  just 
object  of  wrath.  Yet  they  become  part  of  the  world  of 
the  good  will  just  in  so  far  as  they  are  in  fact  hated,  con- 
demned, subdued,  overcome.  The  good  world  is  not  inno- 
cent. It  does  not  ignore  evil ;  it  possesses  and  still  con- 
quers evil. 

Well,  then,  if  this  is  true  of  our  latent  sins,  of  our 


160  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHT. 

resisted  temptations,  if  they  are  permissible  parts  of  a 
moral  order,  in  so  far  as  they  are  condemned  and  hated 
by  our  larger  moral  consciousness,  then,  I  ask,  may  not 
the  same  be  true  of  our  actual  sins,  only  in  a  yet  graver 
and  more  tragic  sense  ?  Is  n't  there  a  deep  truth  after 
all  in  the  stern  theology  that  said  that  even  sin  exists  for 
the  glory  of  God,  but  that  God's  glory  is  vindicated  not 
through  an  ignoring,  but  through  a  hating  and  a  triumph- 
ing over  sin?  "I,"  a  sinner  may  say,  "am  in  all  my 
wickedness  a  part  of  the  divine  order,  which  is  perfect. 
Therefore  my  sin  is  illusory."  We  answer,  not  illusory 
is  this  sin.  Only,  just  because  our  idealism  makes  of  the 
divine  Self  one  transcendent  person,  in  whom  and  for 
whom  are  all  things,  persons,  and  acts,  just  for  this  reason 
there  is  open  to  us  a  vindication  of  the  moral  order  of 
God,  which  will  insist  at  once  upon  the  gravity  of  sin  and 
upon  the  perfection  of  the  divine  morality.  In  God,  so 
we  say  to  the  willful  sinner,  you  are  a  part  of  a  good  will, 
which  bears  just  such  organic  relation  to  your  sinfulness 
as,  in  a  good  man,  his  virtue  bears  to  the  evil  impulse 
that  forms  a  part  of  his  goodness.  The  hatred  and  con- 
demnation of  just  your  life  and  character  makes  God 
holy.  God  loves  you,  indeed,  in  so  far  as  you  are  in  any 
wise  worthy ;  but  just  in  so  far  as  you  are  a  rebel,  you 
enter  into  the  perfect  moral  order,  not  because  your  evil 
is  illusory,  but  because  God  knows  you  to  hate  you  and  to 
triumph  over  you.  Your  evil  will  bears  to  his  the  rela- 
tion that  a  brave  man's  fears  bear  to  his  triumphant 
courage,  just  the  relation  that  a  good  man's  weaknesses 
bear  to  the  scorn  which  his  conscience  feels  towards  such 
weaknesses.  Just  because  of  that  unity  of  the  infinite 
Self  which  idealism  teaches,  God's  organic  perfection  vin- 
dicates sin  by  scorning  it,  makes  it  a  part  of  his  moral 
order  only  by  hating  it,  binds  in  the  chains  of  his  hatred 
all  the  countless  ills  of  the  finite  world,  and  rests  in  his 
eternal  perfection  beyond  the  moral  dissonances  of  the 


OPTIMISM,  PESSIMISM,  AND  THE  MORAL  ORDER.       461 

temporal  world,  just  because  everywhere  in  this  tem- 
poral world  each  dissonance  is  resolved,  is  condemned,  is 
restlessly  transcended.  Whatever  we  are,  we  are,  indeed, 
a  part  of  God's  perfection.  But  the  question  is,  what 
sort  of  part  ?  Are  we  there  to  be  scorned,  despised,  con- 
demned by  the  organic  Self,  whose  perfection  will  be  vin- 
dicated in  such  case  through  the  very  courage  and  em- 
phasis of  its  scorn  and  hatred  for  us?  If  so,  whatever 
our  sin,  it  is  part  of  the  moral  order,  only  the  moral  order 
exists  by  conquering  us,  and  we  live  only  to  be  despised 
by  the  very  Self  that  includes  us.  God's  holiness  we, 
then,  assist,  but  only  as  the  evil  impulse  serves  the  saint's 
triumphant  higher  self.  God's  glory  we  then,  in  our  way, 
also  serve,  but  only  as  vessels  of  his  wrath.  But  do  we 
ourselves  choose  the  good  ?  Then  once  more  we  enter  into 
the  divine  order,  but  this  time  as  vessels  of  honor,  as  min- 
isters of  the  good,  as  servants  and  not  as  enemies,  as  co- 
workers  and  not  as  rebels,  as  beloved  and  not  as  scorned. 
Thus  I  have  tried  to  show  you  how  idealism,  by  its 
very  definition  of  the  divine  Self  as  the  one  organic  per- 
sonality, in  whom  and  for  whom  we  all  exist,  is  able 
to  suggest  a  solution  of  this  one  amongst  the  religious 
problems  of  the  ages,  and  a  synthesis  of  the  truths  that 
are  at  the  heart  both  of  moral  optimism  and  of  moral 
pessimism,  both  of  the  mystical  and  of  the  morally 
active  religious  piety,  both  of  the  faith  in  God's  eternal 
perfection  and  of  the  desire  to  do  right  in  the  temporal 
world.  All  this,  you  remember,  is  true,  so  far  as  to  the 
explanation  of  the  existence  of  sin  as  it  exists  within  the 
evil-doer's  soul.  There  is  another  aspect  of  the  problem 
of  evil  that  is  much  darker  from  our  finite  point  of  view 
than  this  one  ;  and  to  this  other  aspect  I  must  pass  as  I 
close. 

v. 

For  I  do  not  feel  that  I  have  yet  quite  expressed  the 
full  force  of  the  deepest  argument  for  pessimism,  or  the 


462  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

full  seriousness  of  the  eternal  problem  of  evil.  In  fact, 
when,  in  the  past,  I  have  gone  over  these  considerations  in 
company  with  those  of  my  fellows  who  have  experienced 
widely  and  deeply,  I  have  always  found  that  whether  they 
were  themselves  naturally  disposed  to  be  pessimists  or  not, 
they  declined  to  recognize  this  way  of  looking  at  our 
question  about  evil  as  really  exhausting  the  meaning  of 
it.  The  mood  that  genuinely  questions  the  value  of  life 
is  after  all  a  very  gloomily  ingenious  mood.  Its  dialectic 
is  endless ;  it  turns  its  reflection  from  sorrow  to  sorrow, 
with  a  remorselessly  industrious  scrutiny ;  it  refuses  easy 
comfort ;  it  readily  finds  the  philosopher's  formulas  pedan- 
tic and  unspiritual ;  and  in  fact  no  lighter  experience  of 
grief,  no  superficial  disappointment,  no  mere  wounded 
sentiment,  nor  yet  even  a  transient  remorse,  can  give  you 
a  true  sense  of  what  the  problem  of  evil  is.  Even  that 
remorse  which  Lanier's  poem  depicts  is  ill-adapted  to  ex- 
press whether  hell  has  its  seat  in  this  universe.  In  fact, 
to  see  where  the  worst  problems  of  life  lie  is  a  very  black 
experience.  And  yet,  so  much  does  human  reason  love 
insight,  that  I  have  never  met  a  man  who  was  alive  to 
these  deepest  problems,  and  who  still  repented  him  of  his 
insight.  The  strong  and  hearty  beings  who  know  not  the 
clear  bitterness  of  all  higher  truth  often  wonder  how  men 
can  doubt  as  to  the  worth  of  life,  and  often  condemn  as 
mere  morbidness  every  such  scrutiny  as  that  in  which  we 
are  now  engaged.  Many  persons  I  know,  and  honor,  too, 
—  men  of  cheerful  souls  and  well-knit  purposes,  high- 
minded  men  and  strenuous,  to  whom  every  ultimate, 
above  all  every  philosophical  inquiry  as  to  this  matter  of 
the  meaning  and  the  final  justification  of  life,  seems  essen- 
tially either  vain  or  dangerous.  Why  we  live,  they  say, 
and  what  our  duty  is,  and  why  it  is  a  worthy  thing  to  do 
our  duty,  and  how  evil  is  to  be  explained,  —  to  ask  this 
why  ?  is  to  hesitate,  to  dream,  to  speculate,  to  poison  life. 
The  best  thing  is  to  work  and  not  to  inquire. 


OPTIMISM,    PESSIMISM,   AND   THE   MORAL  ORDER.       463 

Yet  there  is  another  way  of  viewing  life,  and  that  is 
just  the  way  upon  which  we  have  been  dwelling.  It  is  the 
way  of  men  who  demand  ultimate  answers,  and  who,  if 
they  can't  get  them,  prefer  doubt,  even  if  doubt  means 
despair.  Pessimism,  in  the  true  sense,  is  n't  the  doctrine 
of  the  merely  peevish  man,  but  of  the  man  who,  to  bor- 
row a  word  of  Hegel's,  "has  once  feared  not  for  this 
moment  or  for  that  in  his  life,  but  who  has  feared  with 
all  his  nature ;  so  that  he  has  trembled  through  and 
through,  and  all  that  was  most  fixed  in  him  has  become 
shaken."  There  are  experiences  in  life  that  do  just  this 
for  us.  And  when  the  fountains  of  the  great  deep  are 
once  thus  broken  up,  and  the  floods  have  come,  it  is  n't 
over  this  or  that  lost  spot  of  our  green  earth  that  we  sor- 
row ;  it  is  because  of  all  that  endless  waste  of  tossing 
waves  which  now  rolls  cubits  deep  above  the  top  of  what 
were  our  highest  mountains.  In  our  natural  state,  you 
see,  we  desire  many  things,  some  more,  and  some  less ; 
life  has  its  strange  mingling  of  joys  and  of  pangs ;  but 
there  is  nothing  in  it  absolute,  nothing  whose  place 
could  n't  be  taken  by  another.  We  are,  then,  cheerful 
and  reasonably  content,  just  because  everything  in  our 
world  has  its  price,  and  can  conceivably  be  gained  by 
finite  labor ;  nor  is  there  for  us  anything  this  side  death 
that  might  not,  with  good  fortune,  turn  out  well  for  us. 
This  is  the  mood  that,  of  course,  with  an  inaccurate  use 
of  the  superlative,  and  so  with  a  very  characteristic  ex- 
aggeration of  speech,  common  sense  calls  optimism.  The 
mood  which  really  opposes  it,  however,  is  just  the  mood 
that  has  learned  to  demand  absolute  standards,  and  that 
finds  none  ;  the  mood  that  refuses  to  be  comforted  with 
such  good  things  as  can  be  brought,  because  it  longs  for 
the  priceless  goods  of  the  spirit.  This  opposing  mood, 
then,  this  true  pessimism,  is  in  its  very  nature  the  mood 
of  the  painfully  awakened,  who  cry  for  God's  truth,  and 
who  so  far  find  it  not.  It  is  the  despair  of  those  who 


464  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

want  a  plan  in  life,  and  who  see  how  our  ordinary  and 
natural  life  is  planless,  accidental,  a  mere  creature  of  for- 
tune. This  despair  is  the  first  voice,  in  many  hearts,  of 
the  truly  devout  spirit.  He  who  has  never  felt  it  does 
not  know  what  the  deepest  religious  experience  must  in- 
volve.  And  he  who  has  once  become  possessed  of  this 
longing  for  a  deeper  meaning  in  life  than  natural  expe- 
rience can  give  or  can  find  there,  would  not  for  worlds 
exchange  his  insight,  gloomy  as  he  may  find  it,  for  the 
vain  cheerfulness  of  unchastened  optimism.  Better,  to 
his  mind,  this  waste  of  dark  tossing  waves  than  the  blind 
and  misbelieving  world  before  the  flood ;  better  to  be 
broken  in  spirit,  than  to  be  vainly  puffed  up  with  miser- 
able finite  conceits. 

Well,  it  is  just  this  absolutely  inquiring  mood,  just  this 
thorough-going  doubt,  that  we  shall  not  yet  have  shaken 
by  all  the  foregoing.  Easy  it  is,  such  doubt  will  say,  easy 
it  is  to  refute  the  religious  optimists  of  Lanier's  type ; 
easy  it  is  to  get  past  the  stately  resignation  of  the  mysti- 
cal mood  ;  easy,  too,  if  you  will,  for  an  idealist,  to  justify 
the  existence  of  countless  evils  in  the  finite  world,  if  only 
they  have  the  less  tragic  type.  Only  there  are  still  doors 
to  which  we  have  found  no  key.  The  eternal  insight  of 
the  All-knower  may  look  in  lofty  peace  upon  the  rest- 
less flight  of  our  time  -  moments.  Everywhere  in  his 
world  there  will  be  change  and  dissatisfaction  ;  yet  in 
his  completeness  he  may  judge  it  all  as  good.  But  there 
is  still  one  condition  that  must  be  met  by  the  struggles  of 
the  finite  world,  if  they  are  obviously  to  conform  to  this 
solution  of  our  problem.  They  must,  namely,  be  signifi- 
cant conflicts.  If  they  are,  then,  so  far,  the  difference  of 
the  eternal  and  the  temporal  aspects  does,  indeed,  aid  us. 
As  for  the  willing  sinner  and  his  just  remorse,  it  is  n't  in 
his  case  that  one  need  feel  deeply  concerned.  He  has 
played  the  game  of  sin  ;  he  is  only  exemplifying  the  rules 
of  the  game.  The  awakened  sinner  may  sometimes  ban- 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,  AND  THE  MORAL  ORDER.       465 

isli  himself  almost  cheerfully  to  that  hell,  bearing,  with  a 
stern  contempt  for  his  own  sorrow,  the  bitterness  of  his 
moral  defeat. 

No,  the  worst  tragedy  of  the  world  is  the  tragedy  oi 
the  brute  chance  to  which  everything  spiritual  seems  to  be 
subject  amongst  us  —  the  tragedy  of  the  diabolical  irra- 
tionality of  so  many  among  the  foes  of  whatever  is  sig- 
nificant. An  open  enemy  you  can  face.  The  temptation 
to  do  evil  is  indeed  a  necessity  for  spirituality.  But  one's 
own  foolishness,  one's  ignorance,  the  cruel  accidents  of  dis- 
ease, the  fatal  misunderstandings  that  part  friends  and 
lovers,  the  chance  mistakes  that  wreck  nations :  —  these 
things  we  lament  most  bitterly,  not  because  they  are  pain- 
ful, but  because  they  are  farcical,  distracting,  —  not  foe- 
men  worthy  of  the  sword  of  the  spirit,  nor  yet  mere  pangs 
of  our  linitiule  that  we  can  easily  learn  to  face  courage- 
ously, as  one  can  be  indifferent  to  physical  pain.  No, 
these  things  do  not  make  life  merely  painful  to  us ;  they 
luake  it  hideously  petty.  They  are  like  the  *k  mean 
knights  "  that  beat  down  Lancelot  during  his  hopeless 
wandering  in  search  of  the  Grail. 

Some  of  you  may  know  a  little  poem  called  "  The 
Fool's  Prayer,"  a  bit  of  verse  that  was  first  printed  some 
years  ago,  and  that  has  more  recently  been  rather  often 
quoted  by  the  author's  growing  circle  of  readers  and  ad- 
mirers. The  author  himself,  a  man  of  not  altogether 
happy  destiny,  is  now  dead.  I  knew  him  well ;  he  was 
first  a  valued  teacher  and  adviser  of  my  own,  and  after- 
wards an  intimate  friend.  The  words  sprang  so  earnestly 
from  his  heart,  and  they  suggest  our  problem  here  so 
thoughtfully,  that  I  may  venture  to  repeat  the  most  of 
them :  — 

"  The  royal  feast  was  done  ;  the  king 
Sought  out  some  new  sport  to  banish  care, 
And  to  his  jester  cried  :  '  Sir  Fool, 
Kneel  now,  aud  make  for  us  a  prayer.' 


466  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

"  The  jester  doffed  his  cap  and  bells 
And  stood  the  mocking  court  before  ; 
They  could  not  see  the  bitter  smile 
Behind  the  painted  grin  he  wore. 

"  He  bowed  his  head,  and  bent  his  knee 
Upon  the  monarch's  silken  stool  ; 
His  pleading  voice  arose  :  '  O  Lord, 
Be  merciful  to  me,  a  fool ! 

c< '  No  pity,  Lord,  could  change  the  heart 
From  red  with  wrong  to  white  as  wool ; 
The  rod  must  heal  the  sin  ;  but  Lord, 
Be  merciful  to  me,  a  fool ! 

" « Tis  not  by  guilt  the  onward  sweep 
Of  truth  and  right,  O  Lord,  we  stay  ; 
'T  is  by  our  follies  that  so  long 
We  hold  the  earth  from  heaven  away- 

" '  These  clumsy  feet,  still  in  the  mire, 
(TO  crushing  blossoms  without  end  ; 
These  hard,  well-meaning  hands  we  thrust 
Among  the  heart-strings  of  a  friend 

" '  The  ill-timed  truth  we  might  have  kept  — 
Who  knows  how  sharp  it  pierced  and  stung  ? 
The  word  we  had  not  sense  to  say  — 
Who  knows  how  grandly  it  had  rung  ? 

"  '  Our  faults  no  tenderness  should  ask, 

The  chastening  stripes  must  cleanse  them  all  j 
But  for  our  blunders  —  oh,  in  shame 
Before  the  eyes  of  heaven  we  fall. 

* '  Earth  bears  no  balsam  for  mistakes  ; 

Men  crown  the  knave,  and  scourge  the  tool 
That  did  his  will  ;  but  thou,  O  Lord, 
Be  merciful  to  me,  a  fool.' " 


I  think  that  you  will  see  how  my  old  friend  here  sug- 
gested where  the  burden  of  the  problem  of  evil  lies  much 
more  wisely  than  Lanier  did.  For  my  friend,  who  wrote 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND   THE   MORAL  ORDER.       467 

these  words,  thus  touched  upon  one  element  of  that  caprice 
of  life  which  does  prove  the  crudest  note  in  all  its  trage- 
dies. As  I  knew  him,  the  poet  of  these  verses  was  pecu- 
liarly sensitive  to  the  presence  in  the  world  of  that  will- 
fulness both  of  fortune  and  of  our  fellows,  which  not 
because  of  conscious  sinf ulness,  nor  yet  because  of  any 
obviously  necessary  discord  of  motives,  but  because  of 
mere  brute  accident  or  stupidity,  tears  to  pieces  whatever 
is  spiritual,  kills  our  infant  children,  leaves  our  unrecog- 
nized heroes  to  die  neglected  and  ineffective,  sunders  the 
wounded  hearts  of  faithful  lovers,  makes  brother  war  with 
brother,  plunges  society  into  bitter  confusions,  defeats 
over  and  over  the  most  sacred  ideals.  My  friend  some- 
times even  used  this  fateful  fact  of  defeat,  I  remember, 
as  a  sort  of  test  of  the  spirituality  of  things.  Were  they 
good,  he  said,  willfulness  would  assail  them  the  more 
surely.  Once,  when  he  was  a  little  weary  because  of  the 
hatred  that  he  had  met  with  during  some  of  his  under- 
takings in  a  very  good  cause,  I  said  to  him,  by  way  of 
a  sort  of  conventional  comfort  and  of  friendly  admonition 
at  once,  "  Why  do  you  work  so  hard  as  you  do  for  the 
good  of  people  who  only  misunderstand  you  after  all? 
They  don't  deserve  the  good  things  that  you  offer,  for 
they  are  people  who  won't  and  can't  appreciate  your 
trouble.  Why  cast  pearls  before  swine  ?  They  only  turn 
and  rend  you."  "  Ah,  Royce,"  replied  my  friend,  "  but 
one  does  n't  quite  surely  know  that  they  were  pearls  that 
he  cast  until  he  feels  the  tusks." 

But  perhaps  you  will  say  that,  thus  put,  the  problem  of 
the  stupidity  of  our  human  nature  and  of  our  fortune 
seems  a  rather  sentimental  problem,  after  all.  Is  not  this 
capriciousness  of  life  simply  part  of  its  pain  fulness  ?  Is 
it  manly  to  lament  just  this  woe  so  deeply?  I  answer,  to 
the  enlightened  soul  it  is  n't  ever  so  much  the  painful- 
ness  as  the  blind  irrationality  of  fortune  that  seems  to 
drive  God  out  of  our  thoughts  when  we  look  at  our  world. 


468  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

Mere  pain  can  be  borne,  for  cause,  very  fairly.  One  maj 
whine,  but  one  can  still  hold  out  to  the  end  and  not  la. 
ment  it  when  it  is  once  over.  But  this  capriciousness  of 
life  is  what  really  makes  it  seem  like  an  evil  dream. 
Consider  once  more  that  horror  involved  in  hereditary 
disease,  and  in  the  fatal  and  unearned  baseness  which 
often  goes  therewith.  Consider  the  way  in  which  the 
wrong-doing  of  one  person  often  entails  not  the  physical 
pain,  but  the  utter  and  inevitable  corruption  and  end- 
less moral  degradation  of  another.  Consider  how  not 
mere  disloyalty,  but  a  transient  mistake,  may  wreck  the 
most  spiritual  of  causes,  after  years  of  devotion  have 
built  up  its  fortunes  nearly  to  the  heights  of  success. 
These,  alas  !  are  the  mere  commonplaces  of  our  temporal 
order.  Is  it  easy  to  say  that  these  things  are  needed  as  a 
part  of  the  gravity  of  the  spiritual  world  ?  No,  for  they 
don't  make  the  world  spiritually  grave !  They  make  it 
rather  insane  and  contemptible.  Moral  evil  in  the  willful 
sinner  himself,  you  can  look  in  the  face  and  defy,  and  that 
too  even  if  you  are  yourself  the  sinner.  Here,  you  can 
say,  is  my  natural  foe ;  I  know  what  he  is  and  wherefore 
he  is.  I  condemn  him,  and  I  rejoice  in  defeating  him. 
But  the  hopeless  and  helpless  degradation  of  the  sinner's 
passive  victim,  how  shall  you  speak  comfortably  or  even 
defiantly  after  that  ?  Here  is  the  place  only  for  pity ; 
and  in  a  world  that  is  full  of  such  things,  and  that  always 
will  be  full  of  such  things,  so  long  as  its  order  is  the  prey 
of  the  mechanical  accidents  of  nature,  where  is  there 
room  for  anything  but  pity  for  its  worthlessness  ? 

Well,  here  indeed  we  find  the  enemy  of  whose  works 
Shakespeare  wrote  in  the  sonnet  that  begins 

"Tired  of  all  these,  for  restful  death  I  cry." 

And  this  will  always  be  the  cry  of  our  darker  moments  so 
long  as  the  tragedies  of  our  world  decline  to  appear  to  us 
as  mainly  moral  tragedies.  Nay,  if  it  were  only  our  sin 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND   THE  MORAL   ORDER.        469 

that  kept  us  from  God,  might  men  not  often  hope  to  see 
his  face?  The  true  devil  isn't  crime,  then,  but^rute 
chance.  For  this  devil  teaches  us  to  doubt  and  growcold 
'oflieart ;  he  denies  God  everywhere  and  in  all  his  crea- 
tures, makes  our  world  of  action,  that  was  to  be  a  spirit- 
ual tragedy,  too  often  a  mere  farce  before  our  eyes.  And 
to  see  this  farcical  aspect  of  the  universe  is  for  the  first 
time  to  come  to  a  sense  of  the  true  gloom  of  life. 

VI. 

Well,  then,  if  this  is  the  final  and  deepest  truth  of  pes- 
simism, what  comfort  still  remains  for  one  who  in  hope- 
less affliction,  or  in  the  chaos  of  defeated  spirituality,  still 
looks  to  the  truth  for  aid  ?  Surely  concerning  this  sort  of 
doubt  one  can  only  speak  in  the  tenderest  and  most  re- 
spectful of  terms.  Cowards  shrink  from  the  petty  pains 
of  fortune  ;  sinners  and  sentimentalists  want  to  get  rid  of 
the  penalties  of  sin  ;  but  they  who  most  lament  and  won- 
der over  this  capricious  irrationality  of  the  world  are  just 
the  noblest  and  gentlest  of  souls,  who  would  pause  at  no 
heroism  were  its  warfare  only  a  significant  one,  who  would 
shrink  from  no  pang,  if  only  by  enduring  it  one  served 
God ;  but  who  cannot  endure  this  weary  dwelling  cheek 
by  jowl  with  the  mocking  demons  of  chance  and  absurd- 
ity. Well,  can  one  still  plausibly  insist  that  somehow, 
in  fashions  unknown  to  us,  the  infinite  Self  is  strong 
enough  to  make  the  facing  and  the  endurance  of  even 
these  demons  somehow  significant?  Can  our  chance  be 
by  any  possibility  his  rationality  ;  our  chaos  his  order,  our 
farce  his  tragedy,  our  horror  his  spirituality  ?  Yes,  even 
this  may  come  home  to  us  if  we  remember  that  he  at 
least,  in  his  absoluteness,  does  not  find  these  things  as 
foreign  facts,  forced  upon  him  from  without.  He  endures 
them,  as  we  do ;  he  condemns  them  as  we  must ;  but  he 
knows  them,  as  we  in  our  finitude  cannot.  And  so,  if 
knowing  them  he  wills  these  horrors  for  himself,  must  ho 


470  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

not  know  wherefore?  In  our  strength  we  cannot  walk 
when  we  face  them.  Can  we  not  walk  in  his  strength  ?  He 
who  solves  all  problems,  shall  he  not  solve  this  one  also  ? 
And  thus,  indeed,  if  in  our  finitude  we  have  but  one  com- 
fort, surely  we  have  that.  From  our  finite  point  of  view 
there  is  no  remotely  discoverable  justification  for  this 
caprice.  This  is  to  our  eyes  no  embodiment  of  a  stern 
moral  order.  It  is  Satan's  own  irresistible  and  mocking 
presence  in  our  life.  He  ought  not  to  be  here ;  yet  no- 
thing that  we  can  do  will  have  any  chance  to  remove 
him.  And  so,  indeed,  were  our  insight  into  the  truth  of 
the  Logos  based  upon  any  sort  of  empirical  assurance,  it 
would  surely  fail  us  here.  But  now,  as  it  is,  if  we  have 
the  true  insight  of  deeper  idealism,  we  can  turn  from 
our  chaos  to  him,  who  is  our  own  true  and  divine  self,  and 
can  hear  from  him  with  absolute  assurance  this  one  word : 
"  O  ye  who  despair,  I  grieve  with  you.  Yes,  it  is  I  who 
grieve  in  you.  Your  sorrow  is  mine.  No  pang  of  your 
finitude  but  is  mine  too.  I  suffer  it  all,  for  all  things  are 
mine ;  I  bear  it,  and  yet  I  triumph."  This  word  of  the 
Self,  I  say,  we  can  be  sure  of,  for  it  is  the  one  final  word 
of  our  whole  idealistic  insight.  It  is  this  thought  of  the 
suffering  God,  who  is  just  our  own  true  self,  who  actually 
and  in  our  flesh  bears  the  sins  of  the  world,  and  whose 
natural  body  is  pierced  by  the  capricious  wounds  that  hate- 
ful fools  inflict  upon  him  —  it  is  this  thought,  I  say,  that 
traditional  Christianity  has  in  its  deep  symbolism  first 
taught  the  world,  but  that,  in  its  fullness,  only  an  ideal- 
istic interpretation  can  really  and  rationally  express. 
Were  not  the  Logos  our  own  fulfillment,  were  he  other 
than  our  own  very  flesh,  were  he  a  remote  god,  were  he  not 
our  own  selves  in  unity,  were  he  foreign  to  the  horror  and 
to  the  foolishness  of  our  chaotic  lives,  we  should  indeed 
look  to  him  in  vain  ;  for  then  his  eternal  peace  would  be 
indifference  and  cruelty,  his  perfection  would  be  our  de« 
upair,  his  loftiness  would  be  our  remote  and  dismal  help 


OPTIMISM,   PESSIMISM,   AND   THE   MORAL   OKDEB.       471 

lessness.  But  he  is  ours,  and  we  are  his.  He  is  pierced 
and  wounded  for  us  and  in  us.  Our  defeats  are  his ; 
and  yet,  above  time,  triumphant  in  the  sacred  glory  of 
an  insight  that  looks  before  and  after  through  the  endless 
ages  and  the  innumerable  worlds,  he  somehow  finds 
amidst  all  these  horrors  of  time  his  peace,  and  so  ours. 
"  My  peace,"  he  says,  "  I  give  unto  yon  ;  not  as  the  world 
giveth,  give  I  unto  you."  This,  then,  at  last,  is  the  true 
realization  of  the  rapt  wonder  that  the  mystics  sought. 
What  in  time  is  hopelessly  lost,  is  attained  for  him  in  his 
eternity. 

I  know  not  that  I  have  persuaded  you  of  all  this. 
True  philosophical  persuasion  would  rest  upon  something 
much  more  elaborate  than  I  have  had  time  to  present.  I 
have  only  sketched.  What  I  do  know  is  that  of  such 
truth  philosophy  must  yet  some  day  persuade  those  who 
are  ready  to  listen  and  apt  to  comprehend.  Herein,  too, 
as  I  think,  are  woven  into  one  cord  the  strands  of  partial 
knowledge  that  in  our  history  we  have  been  finding.  Spi- 
noza and  Schopenhauer,  Berkeley  and  Fichte,  Kant  and 
Hegel,  join  in  suggesting  to  us  our  result.  Like  the  pre- 
decessors of  Childe  Roland,  they  stand  at  the  close  of  our 
day,  ranged  along  the  hillsides  to  view  the  end  of  our 
quest.  For  herewith,  indeed,  the  task  of  these  lectures  is 
ended.  We  have  found  in  a  world  of  doubt  but  one  assur- 
ance— but  one,  and  yet  how  rich !  All  else  is  hypothesis. 
The  Logos  alone  is  sure.  The  brief  and  seemingly  so 
abstract  creed  of  philosophy :  "  This  world  is  the  world 
of  the  Logos"  has  answered  our  questions  in  the  one 
sense  in  which  we  can  dare  to  hope  for  an  answer.  The 
rest  is  silence  —  and,  here  on  the  earth,  endless  labor  in 
the  might  of  the  spirit,  for  whom  and  in  whom  is  all  sor- 
row and  bitterness,  and  all  light  and  life  —  and  peace. 


APPENDIX  A. 


ANTTHINQ  resembling  an  exhaustive  bibliography  of  the  topics 
treated  iii  the  present  book  is  excluded  by  the  plan  of  the  work. 
A  syllabus,  with  notes,  containing  a  few  suggestions  for  the  fur- 
ther study  of  the  problems  and  thinkers  considered  in  the  course 
of  these  lectures,  was  prepared,  was  printed  in  a  series  of  broad- 
sides, and  was  then  put  into  the  hands  of  the  hearers  on  some  of 
the  occasions  of  the  delivery  of  the  lectures.  This  syllabus, 
much  revised,  here  follows  as  an  appendix.  For  its  fragmen- 
tariness,  the  nature  of  the  present  undertaking  may  be  some 
explanation.  It  extends  to  the  historical  lectures  of  the  course. 
Of  the  doctrinal  lectures  it  gives  only  a  brief  suggestion  in  a 
single  summary  statement. 

SYLLABUS. 

The  general  purposes  of  this  course  are  :  — 

1.  To  give  personal  characterizations  of  some  of  the  more  note- 
worthy modern  thinkers. 

2.  To  suggest,  as  clearly  as  may  be  possible  without  technical 
details,  something  of  the  nature  of  their  various  attitudes  towards 
the  great  concerns  and  issues  of  humanity. 

3.  To  illustrate,  in  the  light  of  such  a  study,  certain  significant 
spiritual  problems  of  our  own  day. 

LECTURE  I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

I.  The  general  business  of  philosophy. 
II.  The  variety  and  seeming  failure  of  the  philosophers. 

III.  The  positive  significance  of  philosophy. 

IV.  The  many-sidedness  of  truth. 

V.  The  skeptical  element  in  philosophy  in  its  relation  to  the  posi- 
tive purpose  of  the  study. 
VL  The  limitations  of  the  present  undertaking. 


I/ 

474  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

LECTURE  II. 

THE  PERIODS  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY  ;  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THB 
FIRST  PERIOD  ;  ILLUSTRATION  BY  MEANS  OF  THE  RELIGIOUS 
ASPECT  OF  8PINOZISM. 

I.  The  periods  of  modern  philosophy. 
II.  General  observations  on  the  first  period. 

III.  Spinoza  as  an  illustration  of  the  first  period ;  his  fortune  and 

character. 

IV.  Spinoza's  relation  to  the  problems  of  religion.     Two  general 

forms  of  the  religious  consciousness  distinguished,  and  illus- 
trated from  various  sources,  including  the  devotional  book 
called  "  The  Imitation  of  Christ." 

V.  Spinoza  possesses  one  of  these  two  sorts  of  religious  interest, 
but  not  the  other.  Parallel  between  his  mysticism  and  that 
of  the  "  Imitation." 

VI.  His  system  as  an  outcome  of  his  religious  interest.     His  concep- 

tion of  the  Substance,  of  the  Eternal  Order,  of  Body  and  of 
Mind.  Mystical  experiences  justified  by  geometrical  meth- 
ods. 

VII.  Spinoza's  ideal  of  the  wise  man  and  of  the  love  of  God. 

NOTES.  The  periods  of  modern  philosophy,  as  distinguished  for  the 
present  purpose,  are :  — 

I.  Period  of  Naturalism  and  of  Rationalism :  From  Galileo  to  Spinoza. 
[Its  specially  noteworthy  characteristics  are,  in  addition  to  its  general 

interest  in  outer  nature :  (1)  Its  belief  that  the  whole  order  of  nature  is 
subject  to  rigid  laws  of  a  mechanical  tvpe  ;  (2)  Its  faith  in  the  power  of 
the  human  reason  to  know  absolute  truth  ;  and  (3)  Its  fondness  for  mathe- 
matical methods  in  philosophy.] 

II.  Period  of  the  study  of  the  Inner  Life  :  From  Locke  to  Kant. 

[Its  general  characteristics  are  :  (1)  A  critical  analysis  of  the  powers  of 
man's  mind  ;  (2)  A  growing  skepticism ;  (3)  In  the  end  a  tendency  towards 
revolutionary  reconstructions  of  all  doctrine]. 

III.  Period  of  recent  philosophy :  From  Kant  to  the  present  time. 
[Beginning  at  the  culmination  of  the  previous  critical  period,  the  third 

period  is  at  first  devoted  to  the  study  of  the  inner  life,  but  is  later  led  to 
fresh  efforts  to  comprehend  outer  nature.  It  is  throughout  much  influ- 
enced by  natural  science  and  by  the  newer  study  of  history.  In  conse- 
quence it  develops  the  idea  of  evolution.  Its  problem  is  the  synthesis  and 
reconciliation  of  our  knowledge  of  outer  nature  with  our  understanding  of 
the  inner  life  of  man.] 

The  principal  dates  of  Spinoza's  life  are  as  follows :  birth.  1632  ;  ex- 
communication from  synagogue,  1656 ;  first  philosophic  work  (Princinles 
if  Cartesian  Philosophy)  published,  1663 ;  Theologico-Political  Tractate 


APPENDIX  A.  475 

published  1670 ;  refusal  of  a  call  to  a  professorship  in  Heidelberg,  1673 ; 
death,  1677.  Spinoza's  principal  treatise  is  the  Ethics,  published  posthu- 
mously in  1677.  He  lived  first  in  Amsterdam,  then  in  various  minor  Dutch 
towns,  and  died  at  the  Hague. 

His  principal  works  have  been  recently  translated  into  English  in  Bonn's 
Philosophical  Library,  in  two  volumes.  The  best  accounts  and  commenta- 
ries in  English  are  those  of  Pollock  (Spinoza's  Life  and  Philosophy,  Lon- 
don, 1880),  Martineau  (Study  of  Spinoza),  and  John  Caird  (Spinoza,  Edin- 
burgh, 1888).  The  best  complete  edition  is  that  of  Van  Vloten  and  Land 
(The  Hague,  1882-83,  2  vols.). 

For  comparison  are  added  the  dates  of  several  other  early  modern  think- 
ers. 

Montaigne  1533-1592  Jakob  Boehme  1575-1624 

Giordano  Bruno  1548-1600  Hobbes  1588-1679 

Bacon  1561-1626  Descartes  1596-1650 

Galileo  1564-1641  Pascal  1623-1662 

Campanella  1568-1639  Locke  1632-1704 

Kepler  1571-1630  Malebranche  1638-1715 

LECTURE  HI. 

THE   REDISCOYERY   OF  THE   INNER    LIFE  ;  —  FROM    SPINOZA    TO 
KANT. 

Introductory   characterization  of  this  period  as  one  of  analysis, 
skepticism,  and  study  of  the  Inner  Life. 
I.  Value  of  skepticism  in  philosophy. 

II.  The   problem    concerning  Innate  Ideas  ;  its  origin  and  early 
stages  in  modern  discussion. 

III.  Locke's  treatment  of  the  question  :   historical  consequences  of 

the  controversy,  direct  and  indirect ;  its  value  for  the  study 
of  the  Inner  Life. 

IV.  Berkeley's  idealism.  *. 
V.  Hume's  skepticism. 

VI.  The  transition  of  Kant. 

Locke  (1632-1704)  has  been  often  edited.  A  good  edition  of  his  Essay 
on  the  Human  Understanding,  for  purposes  of  actual  study,  is  the  one  in 
Bohn's  Philosophical  Library,  in  the  edition  of  his  Philosophical  Works. 
The  best  life  is  that  by  H.  R.  Fox  Bourne,  London  and  New  York,  1876, 
2  vols. 

Berkeley  was  born  1684,  died  1753.  He  matriculated  at  Trinity  Col. 
lege,  Dublin,  in  1700,  took  his  Master's  degree  in  1707,  published  his 
Essay  towards  a  New  Theory  of  Vision  in  1709,  and  his  Treatise  concerning 
fa  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  in  1710.  From  1729  to  1731  he  lived 


476  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

in  Rhode  Island,  planning  his  university,  -which  was  to  be  established  it 
the  Bermudas.  The  plan  came  to  nothing.  In  1732,  returned  to  Eng- 
land, he  published  his  Alciphron.  He  became  bishop  of  Cloyne  in  1734. 
The  best  recent  edition  of  bis  works  is  that  of  Fraser  (Oxford,  1871).  The 
same  editor  has  also  written  his  life,  published  at  the  same  time  as  the 
works. 

Hume  was  born  in  Edinburgh,  1711,  died  1776.  His  History  of  England 
appeared  in  1754-1762.  His  first  philosophical  treatise,  the  Treatise  on 
Human  Nature,  was  written  between  1734  and  1737.  His  Essays  appeared 
in  1748.  The  philosophical  works  have  been  edited  in  four  volumes  by 
Green  and  Grose,  London,  1874-75.  On  this  whole  period  one  may  read 
Leslie  Stephen's  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 

LECTURE  IV. 

KANT. 

I.  Difficulties  of  the  study  of  Kant. 
II.  Kant's  person  and  character. 

III.  Kant's  religious  views,  and  his  early  philosophical  develop- 

ment, in  outline. 

IV.  His  doctrine  of  Space  and  of  Time. 
V.  His  doctrine  as  to  the  Laws  of  Nature. 

VI.  The  Moral  Law  as  the  central  truth  in  Kant's  world. 

Kant  was  born  in  1724 ;  received  his  appointment  as  professor  in  the 
university  of  his  native  city,  Konigsberg  (in  far  eastern  Prussia),  in  1770 ; 
published  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  in  1781 ;  published  his  own  prin- 
cipal works  between  this  year  and  1798;  and  died  in  1804.  The  best 
English  translation  of  the  Critique  is  that  of  Max  Miiller.  The  transla- 
tion in  Bohn's  Library,  by  Meiklejohn,  is  now  regarded  as  superseded. 
Watson's  Selections  from  Kant  (Macmillans,  1886),  Wallace's  Kant,  in 
Blackwood's  Philosophical  Library  (Edinburgh  and  Philadelphia,  1882), 
Edward  Caird's  Critical  Philosophy  of  Immanuel  Kant  (2d  ed.,  New  York, 
Macmillans,  1889,  2  vols.),  and  J.  H.  Stirling's  Text-Book  to  Kant  (New 
York,  Putnams,  1882),  are  the  best  aids  to  the  study  of  Kant  in  English. 
The  German  literature  on  the  subject  is  enormous,  embracing  some  hun- 
dreds of  works. 

BRIEF  OUTIJNE   SUMMARY  OF  KANT'S  DOCTRUTE. 

1.  The  origin  of  Kant's  philosophy  is  the  problem  of  human  reason  aa 
the  eighteenth  century  had  developed  this  problem.     The  problem  was, 
How  can  the  truth  which  not  only  theology,  but  also  common  sense  and 
natural  science,  pretend  to  know  about  our  world,  be  defended  again  s* 
skepticism  ?    Our  human  powers  being  once  for  all  so  limited,  how  can  any 
genuine  truth  of  any  sort  be  known  ? 

2.  Kant's  first  answer  is :  Things  in  themselves  are  of  necessity  unknown 


APPENDIX  A.  477 

to  TIB.  We  can  know  in  a  theoretical  sense  only  the  things  that  appear  to 
our  senses,  that  is,  the  Phenomena  of  the  World  of  Show.  Neither  com- 
mon sense,  nor  science,  nor  theology,  can,  with  theoretical  assurance,  carry 
us  beyond  the  world  as  it  seems  to  our  human  powers  of  observation  and 
experience. 

3.  In  particular,  Space  and  Time  can  be  shown  to  be  mere  forms  of  our 
human  sense-consciousness,  and  to  have  no  relation  to  things  in  them- 
selves.    The  unknowable  real  world  without  us  exists,  therefore,  neither 
in  space  nor  in  time.     We  know  not  how  this  world  exists  at  all ;  we  only 
recognize  that  it  exists. 

4.  But  we  can  nevertheless  be  sure  that  our  world  of  seeming  things  in 
space  and  time  must  conform  to  rigid  laws,  such  as  the  law  of  causation. 
For  our  active  understanding,  in  thinking  our  world,  is  bound  by  its  own 
nature,  in  order  to  preserve,  as  it  were,  our  very  sanity  (or,  as  Kant  would 
say,  the  Unity  of  our  Self -Consciousness),  to  regard  all  observed  facts  as 
conforming  to  laws.     Yet  these  laws  of  Nature,  which  science  studies,  are 
the  very  creation  of  our  own  understanding  acting  upon  the  data  of  our 
senses.     Such  laws  are  not  the  laws  of  the  unknowable  real  world  at  all. 
They  hold  only  for  the  show-world  of  our  experience.     Our  own  under- 
standing is,  therefore,  the  source  for  us  of  all  knowable  rational  truth. 

5.  Yet,  ignorant  as  we  are  of  all  absolute  truth,  confined  as  we  are  for 
all  theoretical  knowledge  to  the  seeming  world  of  sense  and  understanding 
in  space  and  time,  we  are  yet  morally  bound  to  postulate  that  the  real 
world  of  the  things  in  themselves  is-  a  Divine  Moral  Order ;  that  is,  we  are 
bound  to  act  as  if  such  a  real  and  absolute  moral  order  were  known  to  UP 
to  exist. 

6.  In  this  way  we  are  theoretically  certain  that  the  seeming  world  is  a 
world  of  orderly  law,  such  as  common  sense  and  science  believe  in  ;  and  we 
are  practically  certain  that  the  unknown  real  world  is  a  divine  and  moral 
world,  because  it  is  our  duty  to  treat  that  unknown  world  as  if  it  were 
divine  and  moral. 

LECTURE  V. 

FICHTE. 

I.  Restatement  of  Kant's  general  significance  in  modern  thought. 

II.  A  possible  transformation  of  Kant's  world  :  First  statement  of 

the  Idealism  common  to  Fichte,  Schelling,  and  Hegel,  and  of 
its  relations  to  Christianity. 

III.  Fichte's  fortunes  and  character. 

IV.  and  V.     Fichte's  Subjective  Idealism. 
VI.  His  book  on  the  "  Vocation  of  Man." 

Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte  was  born  in  1762,  was  a  student  in  Leipzig  and 
Jena  from  1780  to  1784,  was  private  tutor  thereafter,  and  lived  in  great 
poverty,  until  1794,  when  he  was  called  to  a  professorship  in  Jena,  as  a 
result  of  his  first  book,  published  in  1702.  In  1709  he  was  removed  from 


478  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

his  professorship  on  a  charge  of  atheism,  but  was  later  active,  as  professor, 
at  the  new  University  of  Berlin,  until  his  death  in  1814.  His  publications 
were  numerous.  Of  his  best  works  the  most  popular,  translated  by  Wil- 
liam Smith,  have  been  published  in  several  editions  by  Triibner  &  Co.  (3d 
ed.,  London,  1873,  in  one  vol.).  On  this  whole  period,  in  its  general  as- 
pects, a  very  useful  book,  is  the  German,  is  the  History  of  Literature  by 
Julian  Schmidt. 

LECTURE  VI. 

THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  IN   PHILOSOPHY. 

Introductory  summary  of  Kant  and  Fichte  :  — 
I.  The  arbitrary    element  in  Fichte's    doctrine,   and  the  relation 
of  this  arbitrariness  to  the  Romantic  School  and  to  the  doc- 
trines of  our  day. 

II.  The  place  of  the  Romantic  School  in  German  literature. 
Wider  and  narrower  use  of  the  term  Romantic  School. 
Characteristics  of  the  principal  members  of  the  Romantic 
School  proper. 

III.  Illustrations  of  the  Romantic  view  of  life  :  Friedrich  Schlegel 

and  Novalis. 

IV.  Schelling  and  Caroline.     Sketch  of  some  of  Schelling's  views. 

Concerning  the  Romantic  School,  on  the  literary  side,  the  reader  must 
be  referred  to  the  bibliographies  of  German  literature.  The  well-known 
early  essays  of  Carlyle  form  here  an  introduction  which  has  not  yet  lost  its 
value  for  English  readers ;  and  his  translations  are  of  permanent  worth. 
Heine's  sketches  of  the  History  of  German  Thought  and  Literature  are  as 
suggestive  as  they  are  charming  and  untrugt worthy.  Schelling's  volumi- 
nous writings  are  still  for  the  most  part  accessible  only  in  the  original. 
The  best  recent  technical  and  critical  exposition  of  a  portion  of  his  doc- 
trine is  that  by  Professor  John  Watson,  Scketling's  Transcendental  Ideal- 
ism (Chicago,  1882). 

For  comparison  are  added  a  number  of  biographical  dates,  hi  both  Ger- 
man and  English  Literature  :  — 

BORN  BORN 

Herder  1744  Tieck  1773 

Goethe  1749  Schelling  1775 

Schiller  1759  Schopenhauer  1788 

Fichte  1762  Wordsworth  1770 

A.  W.  Schlegel  1767  Scott  1771 

Schleiermacher  1768  Coleridge  1772 

Hegel  1770  Southey  1774 

Friedrich  Schlegel  1772  Byron  1788 

Novalis  1772  Shelley  1792 


APPENDIX   A.  47& 


LECTURE  VII. 

HEGEL. 

I.  Schelling's  doctrine  of  Identity. 
II.  Hegel's  character  and  attitude. 

III.  The  paradox  of  Self -consciousness. 

IV.  Systematic  application  of  the  paradox. 

Hegel  was  born  in  1770  at  Stuttgart,  studied  at  the  University  of  Tiibin* 
gen,  was  private  tutor  from  1793  to  1800,  was  docent  at  Jena  from  1801 
until  after  the  battle  of  Jena,  was  gymnasium  director  at  Niirnberg  from 
1808  until  1816,  was  then  made  professor  at  Heidelberg,  and  from  1818 
until  his  death,  in  1831,  was  professor  at  Berlin.  His  works,  including 
many  very  unevenly  edited  notes  of  his  academic  lectures,  were  published 
by  his  pupils  in  eighteen  volumes  (1832-45),  and  his  son  has  recently  added 
as  nineteenth  volume  his  letters.  His  life  was  written  admiringly  by  Earl 
Rosenkranz  (1844),  and  reviewed,  together  with  his  system,  with  much 
severity  of  criticism,  by  Haym  (Hegel  and  seine  Zeit,  1857).  Since  Haym's 
book  and  Trendelenburg's  keen  criticism  of  the  dialectic  method  in  his 
Logische  Studien  (2d  ed.,  1862,  3d  ed.,  1870),  the  Hegelian  doctrine  has 
received  less  and  less  attention  in  Germany,  although  its  indirect  and  un- 
consciously effective  influence  has  been  grea^r  On  the  other  hand,  in  Great 
Britain,  Dr.  Hutchinson  Stirling's  Secret  of  Hegel  (London,  1865),  one  of 
the  most  waywardly  constructed  of  remarkable  philosophical  books,  began 
(through  its  very  skillful  exposition  of  some  features  of  Hegel's  thought) 
a  movement  that  has  given  Hegel  first-class  importance  for  recent  specula- 
tion. Wallace's  Logic  of  Hegel,  and  Caird's  Life  of  Hegel,  in  Black- 
wood's  Philosophical  Series,  are  important  introductions  to  the  study  of  the 
philosopher.  Mr.  W.  T.  Harris's  Hegel's  Logic,  in  Grigg's  Philosophical 
Classics,  is  a  scholarly  exposition  of  a  highly  technical  sort. 

LECTURE  VIII. 

SCHOPENHAUER. 

I.  The  significance  of  Pessimism. 
II.  The  general  character  of  Schopenhauer's  system. 

III.  Schopenhauer's  person,  fortunes,  and  quality. 

IV.  Summary  of  his  principal  treatise. 

V.  Estimate  of  Schopenhauer's  doctrine.  — • 

Arthur  Schopenhauer  was  born  in  1788,  published  the  first  volume  of 
his  principal  work  in  1818,  made  in  1820  an  effort  to  succeed  as  docent  at 
Berlin,  but  failing  here,  lived  as  wanderer  and  recluse  until  his  death  at 
Frankfort  in  1860.  The  recent  expiration  of  the  copyright  upon  his  works 
(published  in  six  volumes  by  Brockhaus)  has  led  to  many  reprints  of  part 


48C  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

or  all  of  hia  writings.  His  philosophy  is  best  expounded  by  himself,  and 
so  fine  a  master  of  style  should  be  read  in  his  own  tongue,  although  he  is 
now  extremely  accessible  in  English  translations.  His  two  biographers, 
Frauenstadt  and  Gwinner  (the  latter's  Schopenhauer's  Leben,  published  in 
1878,  is  the  best),  have  told  the  story  of  his  eccentric  career  with  much 
detail.  Very  useful  is  Wallace's  Life  of  Arthur  Schopenhauer  (London, 
Great  Writers  series,  1890). 

LECTURE  IX. 

THE  RISE   OF  THE  DOCTRINE   OF  EVOLUTION. 

I.  The  return  to  the  outer  order  initiated  by  Schopenhauer. 
II.  The  Romantic  School  in  its  relation  to  historical  science.  *"" 

III.  The  Historical  School  and  the  idea  of  evolution.  *~ 

IV.  The  problems  of  the  doctrine  of  Evolution.  ^ 
V.  Empiricism,  skepticism,  and  philosophy.  •^ 

VI.  The  position  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer. 
VII.  The  Monistic  movement.    ^ 
VIII.  Outlook  towards  a  positive  creed.  " 

111 '  — . 

LECTURES  X.  TO  XIII. 

GENERAL  SUMMARY  OF  THE    POSITIVE    LECTURES   OF  THE    COURSE. 

I.  The  positive  lectures  discuss  :    (1)  The  general  cosmological 
problems  connected  with  certain  aspects  of  the  doctrine  of  Evolution 
(Lecture  X.)  ;  (2)  The  general  doctrine  of  Idealism  as  the  result  of 
the  historical  movement  that  the  previous  lectures  have  traced,  and 
as  the  fundamental  doctrine  of  philosophy  (Lecture  XI.)  ;  (3)  The 
application  of  the  doctrine  of  idealism  to  the  explanation  of  the  fun- 
damental problems  of  science,  in  so  far  as  they  concern  the  relations 
between  natural  law  and  moral  freedom,  and  between  the  inner  life 
and  the  external  world  (Lecture  XII.)  ;   and  (4)  The  concluding 
discussion  of  the  moral  and  religious  issues  that  centre  about  the  pro- 
blem of  optimism  and  pessimism  (Lecture  XIII.). 

II.  The  doctrine  of  idealism  itself  has  two  portions,  here  called 
respectively  Analytic  Idealism  (the  doctrine  with  which  the  name  of 
Berkeley  is  especially  associated),  and  Synthetic  Idealism  (or  the 
doctrine  of  the  universal  self  as  the  world  thinker). 

III.  It  is  the  province  of  analytic  idealism  to  show,  by  a  study  of 
the  elements  whereof  all  our  beliefs  consist,  that,  in  case  the  real 
world  is  to  be  knowable  at  all,  it  must  be,  in  its  deepest  nature,  a 
world  of  ideas,  that  is,  of  facts  that  can  only  exist  for  minds.     la 
*ther  words,  the  knowable  world  is,  only  in  so  far  as  beings  with 
minds  actually  know  it  to  be. 


APPENDIX  A.  481 

IV.  There  remains  the  alternative,  however,  that  the  real  world  is 
existent  as  something  essentially  unknowable  (as,  for  instance,  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  asserts).    This  doctrine  is  considered  in  Lecture 
XI.  and  is  there  set  aside. 

V.  A  final  objection  to  the  whole  foregoing  argument  for  idealism 
appears,  in  case  one  asserts  that,  after  all,  nobody  ever  does  truly 
know  any  reality  beyond  his  own  self,  so  that  our  previous  discussion 
is  helpless  as  against  a  stubborn  skepticism,  which  doubts  every  pos- 
sible assertion  about  reality. 

VI.  To  this  it  is  finally  answered  that  the  objection  is  in  one  sense 
as  well  founded  as  it  is  imperfectly  understood  by  those  who  regard 
it  as  a  truly  skeptical  objection.     Properly  regarded,  this  very  asser- 
tion, that  beyond  the  self  no  truth  is  knowable,  brings  to  fulfillment 
our  synthetic  idealism,  by  showing  us  that  there  is  but  one  self  in  the 
world,  namely,  the  Logos  or  world-mind.    The^m'te  self  knows  truth 
beyond  its  own  limitations,  just  because  it  is  an  organic  part  of  the 
complete  Self. 

VII.  The  doctrine  of  idealism  once  thus  discussed  in  its  abstract- 
ness,  the  remaining  argument  depends  throughout  on  the  thought 
that  only  experience  can  give  us  any  clue  to  the  contents  and  the 
actual  world  of  this  world-mind,  and  that  idealism  is  in  no  sense  a 
doctrine  of  illusion,  or  one  which  leaves  finite  selves  to  their  own 
caprices.     Idealism  demands  (1)  That  we  should  interpret  experi- 
ence in  terms  of  the  doctrine  of  the  world-mind  ;  but  that  (2)  We 
should  depend  upon  experience  for  the  revelation  of  that  truth  which, 
for  us  finite  beings,  must  remain  a  fast  "outer"  truth,  just  because 
it  is  the  content  of  other  mind  than  our  own  bits  of  selfhood,  and  is 
universally  true  for  all  intelligences. 

VIII.  The  problem  of  the  philosophy  of  experience  is,  then,  to 
distinguish  between  what  is  really  "outer"  and  what  is  "inner" 
about  our  finite  experience,  that  is,  between  "  facts,"  and  our  private 
point  of  view  about  the  facts. 

IX.  The  world  of  outer  experience  is  then  the  world  of  FACTS.    But 
what  is  a  fact  ?     It  appears  to  be  something,  in  the  first  place,  that 
one  must  describe,  in  some  sort  of  universal  terms,  in  order  to  get  at 
the  truth  of  it.     The  principle  of  ordinary  realism  is,  that  you  must 
not  be  sentimental  or  otherwise  emotional  in  your  account  of  the 
truth  of  things,  but  rather  exact  in  your  descriptions  of  what  things 
are.    And  this  principle  has  a  thoroughly  idealistic  justification.    Not 
APPRECIATION,  then,  but  DESCRIPTION  shall  give  you  outer  truth. 
This  is  the  characteristic  presupposition  of  all  natural  science.     And 
descriptive  thinking  is  such  as  seizes  on  universal  aspects  of  things, 
as  opposed  to  momentary  and  transient  aspects. 


482  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

X.  But  what  does  this  presupposition  involve  ?     In  the  first  place, 
as  developed  in  the  work  of  science,  the  presupposition  involves  the 
assumption  that  the  world  is  essentially  descrlbable.    But  one  can  only 
describe,  in  general  terms,  the  well-knit,  the  orderly,  that  which  con- 
forms to  LAW.     Hence  science  assumes  the  universality  and  rigidity 
of  the  laws  of  nature.     And  because  the  most  exact  descriptions  are 
possible  oidy  in  case  of  processes  of  a  mechanical  type,  such  as  go  on 
in  SPACE  and  in  TIME,  science  assumes  that  all  tilings  are  a  part  of 
nature's  mechanism.     Man  too,  from  this  point  of  view  is  a  thing 
amongst  things,  a  product  of  nature,  with  a  nervous  mechanism,  but 
without  free  will. 

XI.  Yet  this  point  of  view  is  as  inadequate  as  it  is  partially  true. 
For  a  closer  analysis  shows  that  one  can  only  describe  what  has  first 
been  appreciated,  that  there  therefore  must  be  universal  types  of 
appreciation,  and  that  in  consequence  IDEALS  must  be  deeper  than 
MECHANISM,  so  that,  in  order  to  be  relatively  describable,  nature 
must  embody  purposes,  and  so  be  possessed  of  worth. 

XII.  With  this  result  we  return  to  our  idealism,  which  is  now 
enriched  by  the  thought  that  the  NATURAL  ORDER  must  also  be  a 
MORAL  ORDER,  that  the  world  of  the  absolute  Self  must  appear  to 
us  as  having  two  aspects,  one  a  temporal,  the  other  an  eternal  aspect, 
one  of  LAW  and  one  of  WORTH.     Man  then  turns  out  to  be  at  once 
a  part  of  nature's  mechanism,  and  a  part  of  the  Moral  Order ;  at 
once  temporally  determined  and  morally  free. 

XIII.  It  is  this  consideration  that  in  the  concluding  lecture  leads 
to  special  suggestions  as  to  the  problem  of  evil. 


APPENDIX  B. 

ON  KANT'S    TRANSCENDENTAL    DEDUCTION  OF  THB 
CATEGORIES." 

THE  statement  of  the  spirit  of  the  Deduction  in  my  text,  page 
126  sqq.,  is  confessedly  a  paraphrase  of  only  a  few  of  the  cen- 
tral thoughts  of  this  extremely  intricate  doctrine.  A  recent  edi- 
tor of  the  "  Kritik,"  Erich  Adickes,1  has  shown,  in  a  fashion 
which  I  find  on  the  whole  very  convincing,  that  the  very  difficult 
deduction  of  the  first  edition  is  in  fact  a  piecemeal  combination 
of  a  number  of  independent  lines  of  argument  which  Kant  must 
have  written  down  at  decidedly  different  times  during  the  years 
1772-80.2  As  to  what,  notwithstanding  the  variety  and  the 
diverse  origin  of  Kant's  different  trains  of  thought  in  this  deduc- 
tion, is  the  most  important  outcome  of  the  whole,  opinions  have 
of  course  differed  widely.  But  Falckenberg,  in  his  "  Geschichte 
d.  neueren  Philosophic," 8  has  stated  the  general  and  ultimate 

1  Immanuel  Kant's  "Kritik  der  reinen  Vernunft"  mil  einer  Einleitung 
und  Anmerkungen,  hrsg.  v.  Dr.  Erich  Adickes.     Beilin,  1889. 

2  Op.  cit.  page  6S3,  note:  "  Im  vorhergehenden  babe  icb  nachzuweisen 
versucht,  dass  was  man  bisher  im  allgemeinen  fur  eine  einheitliche  gross- 
artige  Konception  bielt,  vielmehr  als  eine  mosaikartige  Zusammenstellung 
und  Verschlingung  verschiedener  Gedanken  aus  verschiedenen  Zeiten  anzn- 
sehen  ist."     The  view  here  carried  out  by  Adickes  with  very  great  critical 
ingenuity,  was  suggested  in  a  general  way  as  early  as  1878  by  Benno  Erd- 
mann,  in   his   book,  Kant's  Kriticismus  in  der  ersten   und  in  der  zweiten 
Auflage  der  ''''Kritik  der  reinen  Vernunft"  on  page  25.    The  notion  is  to-day 
rendered  an  inevitable  one  by  a  combination  of  the  internal  evidence  of 
the  text  of  the  first  edition  with  the  evidence  as  to  Kant's  method  of  work 
presented  in  Erdmann's  edition  of  the  Rejlexionen,  and  in  Reicke's  Lose 
Blatter.     As  to  some  of  the  special  results  of  Adickes,  opinions  will  of 
course  differ. 

8  Pages  268,  269,  272,  note  3.  "  Bin  doppeltes  ist  was  nach  Kant  ausser- 
halb  der  Vorstellung  des  Individuums  existiert.  (1)  Die  unbekannten 
Dinge  an  sich.  ...  (2)  Die  Erscheinungen  selbst,  mit  ihren  erkennbaren 
immaneuten  Gesetzen.  .  .  .  Die  Diuge  u.  Ereignisse  der  Erscueiuungswelt 


484  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

result  of  the  Kantian  argument  as  to  the  reality  and  the  consti. 
tution  of  the  world  of  the  objects  of  our  human  knowledge,  in  a 
fashion  that,  as  I  hold,  correctly  represents  what  is,  for  the  fully 
developed  Kant,  the  most  important  thing  to  be  proved  in  the 
Deduction  and  in  its  related  arguments.  According  to  Falcken- 
berg,  namely,  the  final  view  of  Kant  is  that  one  must  distinguish 
between  my  subjective,  or  momentary  consciousness,  and  my 
tieberindividwlles  transcendentales  Bewusstsein,  which  is  equi- 
valent to  die  menschliche  Gattungsvermmft.1  This  latter  it  is 
which  gets  its  sense  data  from  the  unknown  Dinge  an  sich, 
which  applies  the  categories  to  these  sense-data,  which  gives  the 
"laws"  to  "nature,"  which  constitutes  the  world  of  "objects," 
which  makes  these  objects  independent  of  my  momentary  con- 
sciousness, which  distinguishes  them  from  the  subjective  Vorstel- 
lungen  of  the  empirisches  Bewusstsein,  and  which  at  the  same 
time  secures  a  complete  agreement  between  the  subjektive  Vor- 
stettungen  and  the  eine  Erfahrung,  or  the  universal  experience 
wherein  all  sane  human  beings  agree.  This  then  is  the  out- 
come of  the  completed  Kantian  doctrine,  separated  from  all  the 
dross  of  imperfect  and  frequently  inconsistent  comments,  expla- 
nations, and  proofs,  with  which,  especially  in  the  first  edition, 
he  confused  it.  This  it  is  which  the  Deduction  is  above  all  to 
prove.  This  is  that  notion  of  the  one  Self,  constitutive  of  the 
one  true  experience,  which  Kant  introduced  to  philosophy,  and 
which  only  the  peculiar  limitations  of  his  personal  point  of  view 
prevented  him  from  developing  further  in  the  direction  in  which 
the  post-Kantian  thinkers  continued  the  progress  of  thought. 
While,  as  I  have  said,  this  seems  to  me,  in  the  light  of  the  most 
recent  results  of  "  Kant-philology,"  indubitably  the  true  outcome 
of  Kant's  study  concerning  the  nature  and  objectivity  of  truth  for 

existieren  sowohl  vor  als  nticli  meiner  Wahrnehmung,  siud  etwas  von  mei- 
ner  subjektiven  und  momentanen  Vorstellung1  derselben  verschiedenes." 
"  Was  ausserhalb  meines  gegenwartigen  Bewusstseins  ist,  ist  deshalb  noch 
nicht  ausser  allem  menschlichen  Bewusstsein." 

1  Op.  cit.  page  269.  Die  Erscheinung,  says  Falckenberg,  is  for  Kant 
something  that  stands  between  the  absolute  object,  the  Ding  an  sich,  and 
the  Subjekt,  deren  gemeinschaftliches  Product  es  ist,  as  a  sort  of  relatives 
Ding  an  sick.  On  p.  139  of  my  text  I  myself  have  pointed  out  how  ranch 
Kant's  unity  of  self -consciousness  tended  towards  the  later  interpretation  of 
Fichte  and  others. 


APPENDIX  B.  485 

ns  men,  the  fact  of  coarse  remains  that  in  the  "  Kritik  "  there 
are  very  many  passages  which  not  only  bear  but  require  a  less 
developed  and  less  consistent,  as  well  as  a  more  subjective  inter- 
pretation. These  passages  content  themselves  with  saying  that, 
while  the  Dinge  an  sich  are  and  remain  unknowable,  we,  lim- 
ited to  our  Vorstellungen  as  we  are,  actually  do  apply  our  cate- 
gories to  the  world  of  the  Vorstellungen,  because  it  is  our  nature 
to  do  so  ; 1  and  so  we  build  up  the  world  of  the  Erscheinungen 
by  a  process  of  binding  Empfindungen  together  through  the 
instrumentality  of  the  categories,  thus  creating  objects  which 
are  themselves  nothing  but  our  own  private  Vorstellungen. 
From  this  less  advanced  and  subjective  point  of  view  the  dif- 
erence  between  my  empirisches  or  subjektives  Bewusstsein  and 
my  transcendentales  Bewusstsein,  that  is,  my  total  self,  would 
become  at  best  merely  a  quantitative,  not  a  qualitative  differ- 
ence. For,  from  this  point  of  view,  at  each  moment  I  apply 
my  categories.  My  Gemilth  is  of  such  a  nature  that  I  must  do 
so.  By  this  application  I  get,  in  the  world  of  each  moment, 
a  categorized  object.  The  object  thus  gained  is  itself  nothing 
but  my  Vorstellung,  existent  here  and  now.  My  whole  expe- 
rience consists  of  the  numerous  moments  of  my  life ;  and  since 
each  moment  is  categorized,  the  whole  series  must  be.  If  one 
asks  why  I  have  a  right  thus  to  categorize  my  moments  of  expe- 
rience, the  only  answer  is  that  my  experiences  are  my  own,  and 
may  be  treated  as  my  own  nature  determines.  If  one  asks 
why  I  thus  categorize  in  each  moment  the  experiences  thereof, 
the  only  answer  is,  that  otherwise  I  could  not  think  them.  If 
one  still  asks  why  could  I  not  think  otherwise,  the  only  reply 
is  that  such  is  the  nature  of  my  thought.  The  product  of  the 
moment  thus  remains  subjective  ;  there  is  nothing  objective  but 
the  Dinge  an  sich,  and  they  are  unknowable. 

Kant's  doctrine,  stated  in  this  second  and  purely  subjective 
fashion,  is  the  doctrine  that  many  interpreters  have  found  in 
his  book,  as  the  main  outcome  of  the  Analytik.  If,  as  I  have 
stated,  it  is  not  his  final  view,  why,  one  may  ask,  does  it  often 
seem  so  prominent  in  the  Deduction  and  elsewhere,  especially  in 

1  Falckenberg  recognizes  and  briefly  summarizes  these  inconsistent  pas- 
sages ou  p.  270  and  271,  op.  cit. 


486  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

the  first  edition  ?  Why,  again,  if  this  was  the  case,  and  Kant's 
true  doctrine  was  not  this  second  one,  did  he  fail  to  perceive  the 
consequences  of  the  assumption  of  the  difference  between  the 
empirisches  and  the  transcendentales  Bewusstsein  ?  Why  did 
he  leave  the  inconsistent  passages  standing  ?  Why  did  he  not 
proceed  further  on  the  road  towards  the  later  idealism  ? 

These  questions  can  only  be  answered  by  a  reference  to  the 
now  so  well-known  but  peculiarly  complex  conditions  of  Kant's 
own  development.  He  took  no  definite  step  forwards  until  he 
was  forced  to  do  so.  He  unconsciously  preferred  inconsistency 
to  any  dangerous  symmetry  and  dogmatism  of  statement.  His 
own  doctrine  of  an  objektive  Einheit  des  Bewusstseins,  equiva- 
lent substantially  to  what  Falckenberg  calls  die  menschliche 
Gattunysvemunft,  was  of  extremely  slow  and  consequently 
imperfect  growth  in  his  mind.  There  was  a  stage  of  his  critical 
philosophy  in  which  he  certainly  did  not  yet  hold  it.  He 
worked  with  wonderful  patience  and  conscientiousness.  He 
builded  far  better  than  he  knew.  An  unconsciousness  as  to 
his  own  consequences  remained  to  the  end  a  peculiar  charac- 
teristic of  his  mind  and  his  method.  Therefore,  although  it  is 
indeed  our  privilege  to-day  to  understand  Kant  (if  one  may 
borrow  again  his  own  often  quoted  words)  besser  als  er  sich  sel- 
ber  verstand,  a  brief  popular  summary  of  his  Deduction  must 
limit  itself  to  a  comparatively  neutral  statement  of  his  views. 

The  present  is  no  place  for  any  lengthy  discussion  of  Kant- 
philology.  I  must  confine  myself,  therefore,  to  a  few  mere 
references  and  statements  concerning  the  real  outcome  and  the 
gradual  development  of  the  Kantian  doctrine. 

The  best  recent  discussion  of  the  whole  matter  of  the  relation 
of  empirisches  and  transcendentales  Bewusstsein  is,  so  far  as 
I  can  see,  the  admirable  study  by  Vaihinger,  Zu  Kant's  Wider- 
legung  des  Idealismus,1  a  paper  wholly  free  from  any  effort  to 
read  a  falsely  consistent  meaning  into  Kant's  complex  doctrine 
of  the  nature  of  "objectivity,"  but  still  seriously  devoted  to 
demonstrating  what  was  the  actual  tendency  of  Kant's  growing 
thought.  Vaihinger  stands  side  by  side  with  Benno  Erdmann 

1  Published  in  the  Strassburger  Abhandlungen  zur  Philosophic  (Freiburg 
m.  Tubingen,  1884),  pp.  87-164. 


APPENDIX  B.  487 

as  one  of  the  two  highest  authorities  at  present  concerning 
Kant's  growth  and  teaching.  Both  these  scholars  are  thorough 
philologists,  cautious,  elaborate,  patient,  and  at  the  same  time 
capable  of  broad  outlooks  and  wide  generalizations.  This  pres- 
ent paper  of  Vaihinger's  is  in  his  best  mood.  His  principal  re- 
sult is  the  statement  and  explanation  of  the  remarkable  thesis : l 
"  From  Kant's  fundamental  assumptions  follows  necessarily  the 
existence  of  a  physical  world  independent  of  our  [subjective} 
ideas."  Surprising  as  this  notion  must  seem  to  those  who  inter- 
pret their  Kant  in  a  purely  subjective  fashion,  it  is  not  only  true 
that  Kant  stated  this  thesis  in  so  many  words  in  the  famous 
Refutation  of  Idealism,  of  the  second  edition,  but  it  is  also 
true,  as  Vaihinger  shows,  and  as  all  intelligent  readers  of  the 
"  Kritik  "  must  in  the  end  come  to  recognize,  that  this  doctrine 
is,  despite  all  of  Kant's  hesitancy  and  inconsistencies,  the  deep- 
est expression  of  the  genuine  spirit  of  the  whole  "  Kritik." 
Nor  is  this  principle  of  the  real  objectivity  of  Kant's  physical 
world  at  all  opposed  to  the  other  equally  fundamental  thesis  of 
Kant,  namely,  the  thesis  that,  as  I  have  stated  the  matter  on 
page  34  of  my  text,  '•  Man's  nature  is  the  real  creator  of  man's 
world,"  so  that  "  it  is  the  inner  structure  of  the  human  spirit 
which  merely  expresses  itself  in  the  visible  nature  about  us." 
For  Kant's  most  important  metaphysical  deed  lies  precisely  in 
his  distinction  of  the  private  or  subjective  personality  proper 
from  the  universally  human  and  therefore  genuine  selfhood,  and 
in  his  reference  of  the  phenomena  and  laws  of  outer  nature  in 
space  and  time  to  the  constructive  and  objectively  categorizing 
activity  of  the  latter,  that  is,  to  the  relatively  universal  Unity 
of  Apperception.  Hereby  he  prepared  the  way  for  the  further 
universalizing  of  this  human  selfhood  into  the  notion  of  the 
World-Self  of  objective  idealism,  —  the  highest  and  deepest 
result  of  all  modern  philosophy.  "  I  "  exist,  for  Kant,  in  a 
twofold  sense.  I  am  here  and  now  in  the  world  as  this  suc- 
cession of  flying  moments,  this  empirisch.es  Bewusstsein.  But  I 
also  exist  in  another  way  ;  I  have  objective  Einheit  der  Apper- 
ception, and  to  this  objektive  Einheit  I,  as  empirical  subject, 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  140 :  "  Ana  Kant's  f undamentalen  Annahmen  f olget  m >t h« 
treodig  die  Existenz  einer  von  der  Yorstellung  onabhangigen  Korperwelt.* 


488  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

must  submit.  Now  this  objektive  Einheit  is  something  essen- 
tially human.  "  We  "  possess  it  together.  "Es  gibt  nur  eine 
Erfahrung."  l  It  is  the  objektives  Subjekt  of  this  higher  expe- 
rience who  is  affected  somehow  by  the  unknowable  Dinge  an 
sich,  who  applies  the  categories  to  his  Empfindungen,  and  who 
thus  gives  laws  to  nature.  For  me,  as  private  subject,  these 
laws  are  outer,  these  categorized  things  are  objective  and  un- 
changeable. Meanwhile,  I,  as  private  subject,  can  still  know 
these  outer  things  because,  although  they  are  independent  of 
my  momentary  caprice,  they  are  not  independent  of  my  deeper, 
of  my  genuinely  human  personality.  I,  even  in  the  privacy  of 
fhe  moment,  share  in  the  nature  of  the  objektive  Einheit,  repeat 
its  activity,  reconstruct  its  original  constructions,  join  my  tran- 
sient to  my  deeper  selfhood,  and  am  thus,  by  implication,  more 
than  my  purely  subjective  self. 

Vaihinger's  philological  demonstration  of  the  foregoing  inter- 
pretation of  Kant's  outcome  will  be  all  the  more  convincing  to 
the  reader  in  view  of  the  fact  that  Vaihinger  himself  is  quite 
free  from  all  suspicion  of  any  predisposition  to  force  an  "  He- 
gelian "  interpretation,  or  any  absolutely  idealistic  tendencies 
upon  Kant.  His  strictly  objective  discussion  of  the  fact  is, 
therefore,  extremely  persuasive.  I  can  here  only  refer  to  it  in 
this  general  fashion,  and  must  leave  the  technically  skilled 
reader  to  study  it  for  himself. 

Apart  from  Vaihinger's  paper,  the  careful  reader  of  the 
"  Kritik  "  will  often  have  pondered  over  such  phrases  as  refer  to 
the  difference  between  the  objektive  Einheit  and  the  subjektive 
Einheit  der  Apperception,  and  over  such  statements  as  those  in 
the  deduction  of  the  principle  of  causation,  in  the  second  Ana- 
logy of  Experience,  where  repeatedly  the  distinction  is  drawn 

1  In  one  of  the  Reflexionen  of  Benno  Erdmann's  edition,  vol.  ii.  p.  285, 
Kant  himself  gives  this  thought  an  expression  that  is  almost  startingly 
near  the  later  formulas  of  constructive  idealism.  I  refer  to  Refl.  989  of 
Erdmann's  arrangement :  —  "  Dinge  -werden  vorgestellt  als  Erscheinungen, 
veil  es  Wesen  gibt,  die  Sinne  haben.  Dieselben  Wesen  haben  aber  auch 
Verstand,  unter  dessen  Gesetzen  die  Erscheinungen  stehen,  sofern  ihr  mog- 
liches  Bewusstsein  nothwendig  zu  einem  allgemeingiltigen  Bewusstsein 
stimmen  muss,  d.  i.,  sie  haben  eine  Natur."  Yet  this  note  doubtless  belongs 
to  a  time  before  1781. 


APPENDIX  B.  489 

between  "  subjective  succession "  in  me,  and  "  objective  se- 
quence "  im  Gegenstande.  The  reader  will  have  observed  that 
over  this  distinction  Kant  himself  struggles  with  an  almost 
pathetic  earnestness  of  reflection,  that  he  again  and  again  seeks 
to  give  it  final  articulation,  and  again  and  again  fails,  his  clear- 
est assertions  being  after  all  those  which  approach  nearest  to 
Vaihinger's  formulation  as  above,  and  to  the  wording  of  the 
Refutation  of  Idealism  in  the  second  edition.  Slowly  it  will 
dawn  upon  the  reader  that  Kant  is  in  the  birth-throes  of  bring- 
ing forth  a  new  and  wonderful  reflective  notion,  whose  corre- 
spondent in  the  spiritual  faith  of  humanity  is  very  old,  but 
whose  existence  as  a  reflective  doctrine  is  highly  novel.  This 
notion  is  that  of  the  objectively  subjective  self,  —  objective  to  me 
in  my  private  capacity,  but  subjectively  constructive  of  the  world 
of  the  standard  human  experience,  in  so  far  as  this  is  the  true  or 
normal  self.  Kant  does  not  himself  fully  know  what  he  is  pro- 
ducing. He  feels  the  birth  throes ;  he  gives  forth  all  sorts  of 
uncertain  sounds  ;  he  often  seems  to  deny,  and  in  fact  does  deny 
his  own  offspring.  But  none  the  less  is  it  truly  his  offspring. 

But  the  best  view  of  Kant's  relation  to  the  new  doctrine  we 
get  as  we  read  the  notes  now  accessible  in  Benno  Erdmann'd 
"  Reflexionen,"  and  in  Reicke's  "  Lose  Blatter."  Here  Kant's 
endlessly  patient  efforts  to  deduce  ever  afresh  the  categories,  his 
wavering  between  a  subjective  and  an  objective  interpretation 
of  their  application,  the  gradual  and  for  a  long  time  very  dim 
appearance  of  the  transcendentale  Einheit,  Kant's  own  final 
obscurity  as  to  whether  it  really  is  a  conscious  and  wholly  actual 
or  complete  self  at  all,  his  own  unconscious  hints  at  the  coming 
objective  idealism,  —  all  these  things  are  depicted  in  a  fashion 
that  makes  intelligible  to  us  as  never  before  the  piecemeal  struc- 
ture of  the  text  of  the  "  Kritik,"  the  inevitable  inconsistencies 
of  that  great  work,  and  the  beautifully  conscientious  self-re- 
straint of  the  patient  Kant  himself,  who  stood  on  the  border  of 
the  promised  land  of  modern  idealism,  and  could  not  enter.  In 
the  light  of  all  this  we  understand  how  the  thesis  of  the  Refu- 
tation of  Idealism  in  the  second  edition,  a  thesis  which  has 
been  a  stone  of  stumbling  and  a  rock  of  offense  to  numberless 
readers,  is  in  fact  one  of  the  most  genuinely  consistent  and 


190  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

idealistic  of  Kant's  propositions,  so  that,  as  Vaihinger  declares :  * 
"  Die  Anerkennung  einer  von  unseren  empirischen  Vorstellun- 
gen  unabhangigen  Korperwelt  im  Raume,  ist  eine  nothwendige 
und  unabweisliche  logische  Consequenz  aus  den  fundamentalen 
Positionen  Kants.  Diese  Consequenz  hat  Kant  auch  gezogen." 

Yet,  of  course,  there  remains  the  conflict  between  the  con- 
sistent Kant  who  drew  his  own  final  conclusions,  and  the  hesi- 
tant Kant  whose  language  is  often  so  narrowly  subjective.  The 
historical  fact  of  this  conflict  has  led  me,  in  my  general  state- 
ment of  Kant's  results  in  my  text,  to  prefer,  as  I  have  said,  a 
more  neutral  formulation,  which  points  towards  the  deeper  con- 
sequences, but  does  not  expressly  embody  them. 

It  remains,  of  course,  all  the  while  sure  that  Kant's  urspriing- 
liche  or  objektive  Einheit  der  Apperception  was  at  its  deepest 
never  the  unity  of  a  true  World-Self  in  any  absolute  or  com- 
plete sense.  The  argument  of  the  Dialectic  forbade  Kant  to 
look  for  absolute  Vollstandigkeit  in  any  direction.  Kant's 
highest  principle  was  at  its  best,  therefore,  limited  to  what 
Falckenberg  calls  a  menschliche  Gattungsvemunft.  This  limi- 
tation, meanwhile,  was  precisely  what  later  tliinkers  were  bound 
to  transcend. 

As  a  fact,  therefore,  one  would  give  an  nnhistorical  impres- 
sion of  the  true  Kant,  in  all  his  admirable  cautiousness  of  phrase- 
ology, if  one  took  his  doctrine  of  the  transcendentales  Bewusst- 
sein,  as  he  stated  in  his  most  advanced  and  suggestive  discus- 
sions, out  of  its  characteristically  obscure  environment,  and  set  it 
down  as  not  only  Kant's  final,  but  as  his  whole  doctrine.  Un- 
able in  my  text  to  present  all  the  aspects  of  the  argument  of  the 
Deduction,  I  have  therefore  deemed  it  least  misleading  to  lay 
stress  on  the  relatively  neutral  and  therefore  somewhat  equivo- 
cal statement  of  his  views.  I  have  pointed  out  how  he  ap- 
pealed to  the  transcendentale  Einheit  der  Apperception;  I 
have  pointed  out  how  this  Einheit  is,  for  each  of  us,  our  true 
self,  and  how  the  appeal  is  constantly  made  to  it  by  every  one 
of  us,  in  so  far  as  he  is  rational.  This  notion  is  so  far  unques- 
tionably Kantian.  What  I  have  not  pointed  out,  except  inciden- 
tally, as  in  the  passage  on  page  139  of  the  text,  is  that  the  tran> 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  164. 


APPENDIX  B.  491 

tcendentale  Einheit  der  Apperception  is  in  effect  what  Falcken- 
berg  calls  it,  a  menschliche  Gattungsvernunft,  and  is  so  already, 
by  implication,  identical  with  the  Self  of  later  idealists,  a  Self 
which  is  only  Kant's  transcendentale  Einheit  writ  large.  I 
have  deliberately  left  doubtful,  in  the  text,  how  far  Kant's  cate- 
gorized world  of  physical  nature  is  genuinely  objective  for  the 
individual  consciousness.  The  Kant  of  the  final  stage  of  the 
critical  philosophy  knew  that  this  world  is  objective  for  the 
individual,  is  no  product  of  his  empirisches  Bewusstsein,  is  not 
set  in  order,  nor  categorized,  nor  objectified  by  his  momentary 
thinking,  but  is  properly  accepted  by  him  as  a  world  of  fact. 
The  Kant  of  an  earlier  stage,  while  the  critical  philosophy  was 
forming,  did  not  yet  hold  this  view.  The  Kant  of  the  final 
stage  attributed  the  application  of  the  categories  to  an  ursprung- 
liche  Einheit  der  Apperception,  with  which  the  empirisches 
Bewusstsein  is  simply  bound  to  agree.  The  Kant  of  the  earlier 
stage  made  no  clear  distinction  between  empirisches  or  subjek- 
fives,  and  objectives  or  transcendentales  Bewusstsein  at  all. 
But,  by  reason  of  that  curious  fashion  of  composition  which 
Adickes  has  so  well  demonstrated  in  the  text  of  his  own  edition, 
various  stages  of  the  growing  critical  philosophy  are  represented 
in  the  book  as  it  comes  before  us.  And  the  actual  Kant,  by 
reason  of  all  the  complexity  of  his  marvelous  investigation,  was 
himself  never  wholly  aware  of  his  own  inconsistencies,  nor  of 
the  extent  to  which  they  obscured  his  true  thought. 


APPENDIX  C. 

THE  HEGELIAN  THEORY  OF  UNIVERSALS. 

In  the  text,  pp.  222-226, 1  have  briefly  set  forth  Hegel's 
theory  as  to  the  reality  of  the  "  concrete  "  universal.  The  one 
true  Genus,  according  to  him,  is  the  divine  Idee,  in  which,  ac- 
cording to  Hegel,  every  genuine  individual  reality  has  its  organic 
place.  This  theory  of  the  Organic  Universal  as  the  Totalitat 
containing  and  determining  all  the  interrelated  and  true  Indi- 
viduals, which  latter  have  genuine  being  only  as  members  of 
the  organized  body  of  their  Universal,  has  been  shown  in  the 
text  to  be  a  necessary  result  of  the  Hegelian  metaphysics  of 
Self-consciousness.  The  historical  importance  of  the  matter  jus- 
tifies here  the  addition  of  a  few  citations  and  references  for  the 
use  of  the  more  technical  student. 

The  Hegelian  theory  of  Universals  is  intended,  of  course,  as 
the  text  has  also  shown,  to  offer  a  solution  of  the  ancient  ques- 
tion as  to  the  reality  of  universals.  What  objective  validity  have 
our  general  concepts  ?  "  They  must  have  validity,  they  must 
correspond  to  objective  truth,"  so  some  thinkers  have  said,  "  be- 
cause all  science  is  of  the  general,  and  all  science  is  also  of  the 
truth."  "They  cannot  have,  as  general  ideas,  objective  valid- 
ity," so  other  thinkers  have  said,  "  because  all  that  truly  exists 
in  the  world  is  individual.  For  there  is  no  such  thing  as  dog  in 
general.  There  are  in  the  world  only  individual  dogs.  The 
universal,  therefore,  exists  only  as  realized  in  the  single  indi- 
vidual." 

In  view  of  this  antinomy  of  traditional  discussion,  Hegel 
offers  his  characteristic  solution.  The  real  world  is  the  world 
of  the  Absolute  Self.  His  truth  is  organic,  is  allumfassend,  is 
a  Totalitat,  and  is,  in  logical  formulation,  the  universal  Idee. 
Now  the  Idee  is  not  an  "  abstract  universal,"  nor  a  general  idea 
that  is  merely  exemplified  by  the  individual  objects  of  the  world. 


APPENDIX  C.  493 

On  the  contrary,  they  are  in  it ;  for  in  it  they  live  and  move 
and  have  their  being ;  and  it,  on  the  other  hand,  is  in  them  only 
in  so  far  forth  as  they  are  first  in  it.  No  finite  individual,  in 
its  isolation,  embodies  the  Idee,  or  corresponds  to  this  true  Uni- 
versal. Only  the  organic  totality  of  the  finite  embodies  the 
Universal.  And  in  this  sense  the  Genus  is  real.  Hegel's 
theory,  expressed  in  his  own  words,  is  :  — 

"Alles  Wirkliche,  in  sofern  es  ein  Wahres  ist,  ist  die  Idee, 
und  hat  seine  Wahrheit  allein  durch  und  kraft  der  Idee.  Das 
einzelne  Seyn  ist  irgend  eine  Seite  der  Idee ;  filr  dieses  bedarf 
es  daher  noch  anderer  Wirklichkeiten,  die  gleichfalls  als  beson- 
ders  filr  sich  bestehende  erscheinen  ;  in  ihneu  zusammen  und  in 
ihrer  Beziehung  ist  allein  der  Begriff  realisirt.  Das  Einzelne 
fur  sich  entspricht  seinem  Begriffe  nicht ;  diese  Beschranktheit 
seines  Daseyns  macht  seine  Endlichkeit  und  seinen  Untergang 
aus."  1 

To  the  illustration  of  this  theory  it  is  worth  while,  however, 
to  devote  some  further  space.  With  his  customary  manysided- 
ness  of  treatment,  Hegel,  of  course,  endeavors  to  show  how 
previous  theories  of  the  universal  have  a  relative  and  historical 
justification  as  stages  on  the  way  to  the  true  insight,  and  as 
embodiments  of  lower  and  partly  untrue  forms  of  the  universal 
forms,  which  are  presented  to  us  in  the  phenomenal  appear- 
ances of  the  finite  world. 

To  these  lower  forms  of  the  universal,  Hegel  devotes  a  patient 
and  extended  attention ;  and  we  must  first  briefly  refer  to  the 
principal  one  amongst  them. 


In  particular,  then,  Hegel's  theory  of  Universals  cannot  be 
understood  without  a  clear  distinction  between  the  lower  form 
of  what  he  calls  Verstandes-Allgemeinheit^  and  the  true  or 
higher  form  of  the  Vernunft-Allgemeinheit  or  Allgemeinheit 
des  Begriffes.  The  Understanding,  according  to  Hegel,  is  the 
first  form  of  the  activity  of  thought.8  As  such  it  produces,  not 
Begriffe  in  the  proper  sense  at  all,  but  what  Hegel  technically 

1  The  passage  here  given  in  full  is  referred  to  and  in  larger  part  trans- 
lated in  the  text,  p.  224. 
3  Encycloped.  §  407,  Werke,  vol.  vii.  2,  p.  355. 


494  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

calls  Gedanken.1  Gedanken  of  this  first  sort  are  the  universala 
of  the  understanding,  such  ideas  as  man  or  house  or  animal. 
These  are  often  called  Begriffe,  but  wrongly.2  On  this  stage 
they  are  the  product  of  analysis  and  abstraction  ;  and  abstrac- 
tion is  as  necessary  in  the  beginning  of  our  thinking  as  it  is 
untrue  from  the  higher  point  of  view.  It  is  the  very  business 
of  philosophy  to  transform  Gedanken  into  Begriffe.*  The  Ge- 
danke,  as  it  is  first  reached,  embodies  the  universal  qualities  or 
characteristics  present  in  each  of  many  individuals.  Out  of 
such  individuals  it  thus  makes  an  abstractly  defined  class  or 
Gattung.  This  class,  or  genus  of  the  understanding,  is  related 
to  the  sub-classes  and  individuals  that  fall  within  its  Umfang  in 
the  fashion  that  the  Aristotelian  logic  originally  defined.4  The 
Gattung,  namely,  has  species  or  Arten,  which  as  subordinate 
classes  are  subsumed  under  it,  forming  each  a  part  of  its  Um- 
fang, while  the  individuals  are  in  their  turn  subsumed  under  the 
various  Arten.  Both  Gattung  and  Art,  for  this  stage  of  thinking, 
express  only  das  Gemeinsame  found  in  each  and  all  of  many 
individuals.  In  experience,  meanwhile,  only  the  individuals  can 
be  shown,  not  the  Gattung.  For  the  Gattung  is  not  yet  the 
Begriff,  which  will  turn  out  to  be  much  more  than  ein  Ge- 
meinschaftlicJies.  This  Gattung  of  the  understanding  has  no 
Mxistenz.  For  it  is  thus  far,  on  its  subjective  side,  the  Gedanke 
of  the  observer,  which,  being  formal,  does  not  explain  either 

1  Phanomenol.,  Werke,  vol.  ii.  pp.  24-25. 

2  Encydop.,  Werke,  vol.  vi.  p.  324. 

8  Phanomenol.,  Werke,  vol.  ii.  p.  26.  On  the  definition  of  the  Ver stand, 
see,  also,  Werke,  voL  vii.  2,  p.  356.  The  understanding  is  there  "  formal." 
Its  activity  depends  upon  Abstrahiren.  "  Trennt  er  das  Znfallige  vom  We- 
sentlichen  ab,  so  1st  er  durchaus  in  seinem  Rechte  und  erscheint  als  Das 
was  er  in  Wahrheit  seyn  soil."  Das  Wesentliche,  so  abstracted,  the  under- 
standing uses  to  define  its  universuls. 

*  "Aristoteles,"  says  Hegel,  in  his  Gesch.  d.  Philos.,  Werke,  vol.  xiv.  p. 
368,  "  ist  der  Urheber  der  verstiindigen  Logik  ;  ihre  Formen  betreff  en  nur 
das  Verhiilt  nisa  von  Endlichen  zu  einander,  nnd  in  ihnen  kanii  das  Wahre 
nicht  gefasst  werden."  This  observation  occurs  in  connection  with  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  Aristotelian  theory  of  universals,  which  is  there  said  to  in- 
volve the  method  used  "  in  den  endlichen  Wissenschaften,"  namely,  "  das 
Subsumiren  des  Besondern  unter  das  Allgemeine."  It  is  just  this  sort  of 
universality  and  this  kind  of  snbsumption  that  Hegel's  theory  is  intended 
to  supersede. 


APPENDIX   C.  495 

the  content  of  the  individual  thing,  or  the  totality  of  the  actual 
relations  of  this  individual  thing  to  others  in  the  real  world.1 
Speaking  in  objective  terms  we  can  indeed  already  say  that  the 
Gedanke  corresponds  to  an  allgemeine  Natur,  present  as  das 
Wesentliche,  or  as  die  bestvmmte  Wesentlichkeit  of  the  finite  in- 
dividuals that  belong  to  the  Gattung.  For  the  thoughts  even  of 
the  understanding  have  a  lower  sort  of  truth.  Whatever  is  in 
the  world  is  the  embodiment  of  thought ;  and  in  so  far  as  the 
Gedanken  of  the  understanding  are  also  the  product  of  thought, 
they  do  correspond  to  the  inner  nature  of  things.  Only,  the 
universals  of  the  understanding  tell  but  a  portion  of  the  real 
truth  about  the  objects  present  in  experience.  And  in  just  so 
far  these  universals  are  untrue.  The  Begriff,  or  the  truly  objec- 
tive thought  of  the  whole  nature  of  things,  will  be  "  mehr  als  nur 
die  Angabe  der  wesentlichen  Bestimmtheiten,  d.  i.,  der  Ver- 
standesbestimtnungen  einer  Sache." 2  The  universal  of  the 
understanding,  applying  to  a  nature  which  is  only  exemplified 
by  each  individual,  and  which  exists  nowhere  but  in  such  indi- 
vidual examples  (as  animality  exists  only  in  individual  ani- 
mals), tells  us  nothing  about  the  interrelationship  of  the  indi- 
viduals themselves,  gives  us  therefore  no  Einheit  des  Begriffes. 
Of  this  universal  of  the  understanding  Hegel  gives  us  many 
accounts.  No  intelligent  student  of  his  works  can  confound  this 
sort  of  universality  with  the  true  Vemunft-Allgemeinheit,  whose 
exposition  forms  Hegel's  peculiar  contribution  to  the  theory  of 
universals.  To  sum  up  so  far:  The  universal  of  the  under- 

1  It  is  of  this  stage  of  thought  that  Hegel  is  speaking  when,  in  the  En- 
cyclop.,  Werke,  vol.  vi.  p.  46,  he  says :  "  Das  Thier  als  solches  ist  nicht  zu 
zeigen,  sondern  immer  nur  ein  Bestiramtes.     Das  Thier  existirt  nicht,  son- 
dern  ist  die  allgemeine  Natur  der  einzelnen  Thiere."     Thier  is,  so  far,  no 
BegriJF,  no  true  universal  at  all.     And  Existenz,  with  its  verb  existiren, 
has  a  special  meaning  in  Hegel's  logic.     The  Begriff,  when  we  get  to  it, 
will  have  a  higher  sort  of  reality,  namely,  what  Hegel  calls  Objektivitiit, 
something  much  more  than  bare  Existenz. 

2  Logik,  Werke,  vol.  iii.  p.  274.     Compare  Encydop.,  Werke,  vol.  vi.  p. 
65,  where  the  business  of  the  understanding  in  grasping  the  wesentlichen 
Inhalt  of  finite  things,  in  classifying  abstractly,  and  in  applying  predicates 
accordingly,  is  further  illustrated.     The  technical  phrases  wesentliche  Be- 
ttimmtheit,  bestimmte  Wesentlichheit,  etc.,  refer,  then,  only  to  universality  aa 
conceived  by  the  understanding. 


496  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

standing  is  the  first  discovery  of  our  thought  when  the  latter 
is  applied  to  things.  Of  this  universal  it  was  that  Aristotle's 
logic  gave  the  traditional  theory.  Aristotle  himself,  to  be  sure, 
in  his  metaphysical  theory,  really  transcended  the  limitations  of 
his  logical  theory,  and  implied  the  existence  of  a  deeper  and 
truer  sort  of  universality  in  the  nature  of  things.  But  he  did 
this  haltingly.1  His  metaphysical  instinct  is  truer  than  his  logic. 
He  uses  the  higher  universal,  but  has  a  logical  theory  only  of 
the  lower.  And  as  for  this  lower,  it  appears  to  the  understand- 
ing as  objectively  existent  only  in  each  individual,  as  constitut- 
ing the  essence  or  wesentliche  Bestimmtheit  thereof.  Subjec- 
tively it  is  represented  by  the  Gedanke,  which  is  the  thought  of 
some  abstractly  defined  class-essence.  And  such  class-essences 
appear  to  the  understanding  to  have  no  Existenz  as  such,  apart 
from  the  individuals  in  which  they  are  exemplified.  This  is 
why  we  are  accustomed  to  say,  from  the  point  of  view  of  ordi- 
nary thought,  that  general  ideas  do  not  represent  concrete  reali- 
ties, and  that  only  the  individual  is  real. 

II. 

Principal  Caird,  in  his  "  Philosophy  of  Religion,"  *  after  de- 
scribing the  foregoing  lower  sort  of  universality,  and  pointing 
out  its  inadequacy  to  the  expression  of  the  truth  of  the  real 
world,  proceeds,  in  a  confessedly  Hegelian  spirit,  to  set  forth 
the  nature  of  the  Vernunft-Allgemeinheit,  and  its  application  to 
the  comprehension  of  the  relations  of  God  and  the  world,  as 
follows :  — 

"  But  thought  is  capable  of  another  and  deeper  movement. 
It  can  rise  to  a  universality  which  is  not  foreign  to,  but  the  very 
inward  nature  of  things  in  themselves,  not  the  universal  of  an 
abstraction  from  the  particular  and  different,  but  the  unity 
which  is  immanent  in  them  and  finds  in  them  its  own  necessary 

1  Gesch.  d.  Phil.,  Werke,  vol.  xiv.  p.  283  :  "  Hat  Aristoteles  aber  aucb  . . . 
die  allgemeine  Idee  nicht  logisch  herausgehoben,  (denn  sonst  ware  seine 
sogenannt  Logik,  die  etwas  Anderes  ist,  f iir  die  Metliode  als  der  eine  Begriff 
in  Alletn  zu  erkennen),  so  erscheint  doch  andererseits  bei  Aristoteles  die 
Idee  Gottes,  selbst  auch  als  ein  Besonderes  an  ihrer  Stelle  neben  den  Andero, 
obzwar  sie  alle  Wabrheit  ist." 

a  Page  229,  sqq. 


APPENDIX  C.  491 

expression ;  not  an  arbitrary  invention  of  the  observing  and 
classifying  mind,  .  .  .  but  an  idea  which  expresses  the  inner 
dialectic,  the  movement  or  process  towards  unity,  which  exists 
in  and  constitutes  the  being  of  the  objects  themselves.  This 
deeper  and  truer  universality  is  that  which  may  be  designated 
ideal  or  organic  universality.  The  idea  of  a  living  organism 
...  is  not  a  common  element  which  can  be  got  at  by  abstrac- 
tion and  generalization,  by  taking  the  various  parts  and  mem- 
bers, stripping  away  their  differences,  and  forming  a  notion  of 
that  which  they  have  in  common.  That  in  which  they  differ  is 
rather  just  that  out  of  which  their  unity  arises  and  in  which 
is  the  very  life  and  being  of  the  organism ;  that  which  they 
have  in  common  they  have,  not  as  members  of  a  living  organ- 
ism, but  as  dead  matter,  and  what  you  have  to  abstract  in  order 
to  get  it  is  the  very  life  itself.  Moreover,  the  universal,  in  this 
case,  is  not  last  but  first.  We  do  not  reach  it  by  first  thinking 
the  particulars,  but  conversely,  we  get  at  the  true  notions  of  the 
particulars  only  through  the  universal.  What  the  parts  or 
members  of  an  organism  are,  —  their  form,  place,  structure, 
proportion,  functions,  relations,  their  whole  nature  and  being,  is 
determined  by  the  idea  of  the  organism  which  they  are  to  com- 
pose. It  is  it  which  produces  them,  not  they  it.  In  it  lies  their 
reason  and  ground.  They  are  its  manifestations  or  specifica- 
tions. It  realizes  itself  in  them,  fulfills  itself  in  their  diversity 
and  harmony.  .  .  .  You  cannot  determine  the  particular  mem- 
ber or  organ  save  by  reference  to  that  which  is  its  limit  or  nega- 
tion. It  does  not  exist  in  and  by  itself,  but  in  and  through 
what  is  other  than  itself,  —  through  the  other  members  and 
organs  which  are  at  once  outside  of  and  within  it,  beyond  it, 
and  yet  part  and  portion  of  its  being.  .  .  .  Here,  then,  we  have 
a  kind  of  universality  which  is  altogether  different  from  the 
barren  and  formal  universality  of  generalization,  and  the  indi- 
cation of  a  movement  of  thought  corresponding  to  an  inner  rela- 
tion of  things  whicli  the  abstracting,  generalizing  understanding 
is  altogether  inadequate  to  grasp." 

Applying  the  notion  of  universality  thus  reached  to  the  rela- 
tions of  our  own  thought  to  the  reality  about  which  we  think, 
Principal  Caird  next  proceeds,  on  p.  233,  sqq.,  to  "  a  brief  con- 


498  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

sideration  of  the  relation  of  Nature  to  Finite  Mind."  He  dwells 
upon  the  well-known  opposition  between  matter  and  mind, 
which,  for  the  understanding,  are  two  separate  and  opposed 
realities.  He  states  the  familiar  problem  as  to  how  mind  can 
know  the  natural  order  outside  of  our  minds,  shows  that  this 
problem  is  the  same  in  principle  with  the  problem  about  the  rela- 
tion between  finite  mind  and  God,  and  suggests,  as  a  solution  of 
both  problems,  the  thought,  the  "  Nature,"  the  finite  mind,  and 
God  or  the  infinite  mind,  are  not  discordant  or  irreconcilable 
ideas,  but  ideas  which  belong  to  one  organic  whole  or  system 
of  knowledge.  After  devoting  considerable  space  to  the  illus- 
tration of  this  view,  and  dwelling  further  on  the  "  principle  of 
Organic  Unity  "  (p.  238),  he  points  out  (p.  239)  that  the  prob- 
lem of  knowledge  is  to  be  solved  on  the  basis  of  the  theory  of 
the  organic  universal  itself.  "  It  is  but  a  spurious  idealism 
which  makes  the  world  without  only  the  illusory  creation  of  the 
individual  mind.  Rather  the  truth  is  that  the  individual  mind 
must  renounce  its  own  isolated  independence,  must  cease  to 
assert  itself,  must  lose  itself  in  the  object,  before  it  can  attain 
to  any  true  knowledge  of  Nature.  ...  In  order,  therefore,  to 
attain  to  the  universal  life  of  reason  that  is  in  the  world,  it  is 
an  indispensable  condition  that  I  renounce  my  own  individuality, 
my  particular  thought  and  opinion,  and  find  the  true  realization 
of  my  own  reason  in  that  absolute  reason  or  truth  which  Nature 
manifests.  .  .  .  The  principle  in  fine  that  solves  the  difference 
between  Nature  and  Finite  Mind  is,  that  their  isolated  reality 
and  exclusiveness  is  a  figment,  and  that  the  organic  life  of 
reason  is  the  truth  or  reality  of  both." 

On  page  240,  Principal  Caird  continues  his  discussion  by  ap- 
plying the  same  principle  to  "  the  solution  of  the  higher  prob- 
lem of  Religion,  or  of  the  relation  of  the  Finite  Mind  to  God." 
"  Here,  too,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  understanding,  which  clings 
to  the  hard  independent  identity  of  either  side  .  .  .  renders  any 
true  solution  impossible.  ...  A  true  solution  can  be  reached 
only  by  apprehending  the  Divine  and  the  Human,  the  Infinite 
and  the  Finite,  as  the  moments  or  members  of  an  organic  whole, 
in  which  both  exist,  at  once  in  their  distinction  and  their  unity." 
Principal  Caird  then  gives  as  a  further  illustration  of  the  true 


APPENDIX  C.  499 

theory  of  universals,  and  as  an  aid  in  comprehending  the  organic 
unity  first  mentioned,  "  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  other 
individuals  "  in  the  "  case  of  our  social  relations."  "  The  ordi- 
nary conception  of  self-identity  isolates  the  individual  from  his 
fellow-men."  But  this,  says  our  author,  is  wrong.  "The  ab- 
stract individual  is  not  truly  man,  hut  only  a  fragment  of  human- 
ity, a  being  as  devoid  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  elements  which 
are  of  the  essence  of  the  man's  life,  as  the  amputated  limb  of 
participation  in  the  vital  existence  of  the  organism.  The  social 
relations  are  a  necessary  part  of  the  being  of  the  individual.  .  .  . 
It  is  not  by  supposing  in  the  first  place  a  number  of  individual 
human  beings,  each  complete  in  himself,  and  then  combining 
these  individuals,  that  we  reach  the  idea  of  the  Family ;  rather 
must  we  first  think  the  Family  in  order  to  know  the  individual. 
.  .  .  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  universal  is  the  prius  of  the  par- 
ticular. Yet  the  universal  must  not  be  conceived  as  having  any 
reality  apart  from  the  particulars,  any  more  than  the  body  apart 
from  its  members.  The  true  idea  is  reached  only  by  holding 
both  together  in  that  higher  unity  which  at  once  comprehends 
and  transcends  them,  that  organic  unity,  whether  of  the  Family 
or  the  State,  which  is  the  living  integration  of  the  individual 
members  which  compose  it."  "  In  the  same  fashion,"  con- 
tinues Principal  Caird,  "  the  true  Infinite  is  not  the  negation  of 
the  Finite,  but  that  which  is  the  organic  unity  of  the  Infinite 
and  Finite." 

m. 

The  foregoing  quotations  from  Principal  Caird  will  serve, 
both  to  give  an  excellent  summary  of  certain  aspects  of  the 
Hegelian  theory  of  universals,  and  to  show  that  the  theory  itself 
is  no  novelty  to  English  readers.1  It  has  become  a  common- 
place of  discussion  for  one  whole  school  of  neo-Hegelians. 

To  pass,  however,  to  Hegel's  own  account  of  the  matter. 
K  Thought,"  says  Hegel,  "  is  in  the  first  place  thought  after  the 
fashion  of  the  understanding;  but  thought  does  not  remain  on 
this  stage,  and  the  Begriff  is  not  a  mere  Verstandeslestimr 

1  Cf .  also  Professor  Edward  Caird's  Social  Philosophy  of  Auguste  Comtc, 
p.  199 :  "  The  universal  of  science  and  philosophy  is  ...  not  merely  a 
generic  name,  under  which  things  are  brought  together,  but  a  principle 
which  unites  them  and  determines  their  relation  to  each  other." 


500  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

mung" l  The  higher  movement  of  the  Vemunft  depends  on 
the  well-known  Dialektik  of  thought,  which  takes  the  abstract 
facts  and  qualities  that  the  understanding  has  sundered,  the 
Bestimmungen,  or  Seiten,  or  Individuen  of  the  finite  world, 
and  discovers  "  die  Einheit  der  Bestimmungen  in  ihrer  Entgegen- 
setzung."  2  This  Dialektik  has  a  "  positive  result,"  namely, 
the  discovery  of  das  Vernunftige,  which  is  not  merely  ein  Ab- 
straktes,  but  "  zugleich  ein  Konkretes,8  weil  es  nicht  einfache, 
formelle  Einheit,  sondern  Einheit  unterschiedener  Bestimmun-. 
gen  ist.  Mit  blossen  Abstraktionen  oder  formellen  Gedanken 
hat  es  darum  tlberhaupt  die  Philosophic  ganz  und  gar  nicht  zu 
thun,  sondern  allein  mit  konkreten  Gedanken." 

The  Allgemeinheit  des  Verstandes  is,  therefore,  transformed 
into  the  Begriff  whenever  two  related  processes  have  been 
carried  out:  (1)  When  the  formal  abstractions  or  wesentliche 
Bestimmungen,  which  the  understanding  separates  from  one  an- 
other, and  opposes  to  one  another,  —  such  abstractions  as  right 
and  left,  inner  and  outer,  substance  and  accident,  —  have  been 
united  once  more  by  organic  ties,  and  shown  to  be  interrelated 
and  inseparable  4 ;  and  (2)  When,  by  the  same  means,  the  things 
of  the  finite  world  have  been  shown  to  be  members  of  one 
organic  total.  The  intimate  relationship  of  these  two  processes 
for  Hegel  is  one  of  the  prominent  characteristics  of  his  whole 
method.  Das  Wahre  ist  konkret  means  for  him  equally,  "  The 
truth  is  an  organic  union  of  interrelated  aspects,  characters, 
qualities,"  and  "  The  truth  is  the  Universal  in  which  the  par- 
ticulars and  individuals  are  organically  joined."  6  For  example, 

1  Encycl.,  Werke,  vol.  vi.  p.  147.     The  following-  pages  contain  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  account  given  above  of  the  nature  and  limitations  of  the  Fer- 
standes-Allgemeinheit. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  157. 

8  On  the  Hegelian  use  of  konkret,  see  the  excellent  definition  of  FalckeL 
berg's  Gesch.  d.  neueren   Philosophic,  p.  478 :    "  The  concrete  Begriff  of 
Hegel  is  an  Universal  that  has  the  Particular  in  itself,  and  that  produces 
its  own  particulars  (sich  besondert)." 

4  Logik,  Werke,  vol.  iv.  pp.  63,  64. 

6  "  Das  einzelne  Seyn  ist  irgend  eine  Seite  der  Idee,"  Hegel  has  said  in 
the  passage  quoted  above.  In  various  passages  he  identifies  Seite  with 
Bestimmung ;  so,  for  instance,  in  the  Religionsphilosophie*  Werke,  vol.  xii. 
p.  422,  where  he  speaks  of  the  Zusammenhang  zweier  Seiten  oder  Bestim- 
mungen. From  these  and  many  other  passages  it  easily  becomes  evident 


APPENDIX   C.  501 

in  the  case  of  any  man  such  as  Caius  or  Titus,  Hegel  says : 1 
"  Was  der  einzelne  Mensch  im  Besonderen  1st,  das  ist  er  nur  in 
sofern,  als  er  vor  alien  Dingen  Mensch  als  solcher  ist  und  im 
Allgemeinen  ist,  und  diess  Allgemeine  ist  nicht  nur  etwas  ausser 
und  neben  andern  abstrakten  Qualitaten  .  .  .  sondern  viel- 
mehr  das  alles  Besondere  Durchdringende  und  in  sich  Beschlies- 
sende."  Moreover,  as  he  tells  us,  das  Allgemeine  is  here,  in 
case  of  humanity,  and  in  its  deepest  truth,  something  more  than 
all  men.2  It  does  more  than  include  in  an  indifferent  way  the 
individuals.  It  is  for  them  all  not  "  bloss  etwas  denselben 
Gemeinschaftliches"  it  is  their  Grund,  their  Boden,  their  Sub- 
stanz.  Now  here  is  humanity  regarded  as  something  universal 
and  konkret.  As  such  it  is  at  once  all  men,  and  it  is  more.  It 
is  something  pervading  and  determining  all  the  characteristics 
of  each  man,  and  binding  together  all  his  besondere  Qualitaten. 
It  is  thus  konkret  in  two  senses,  namely,  in  so  far  as  in  it  all 
men  are  together,  and  in  so  far  as  through  it  all  Qualitaten  of 
each  man  are  united.  Yet  not  even  in  this  passage  is  Hegel 
expounding  the  completely  organic  universal,  but  only  a  form  on 
the  way  towards  the  realization  of  it.  It  will  be  noticed,  how- 
ever, that  here  he  distinctly  declares  that  the  individual  is  im 
Allgemeinen,  " in  the  Universal"  which  is,  therefore,  the  inclu- 
sive Substanz  of  the  individuals. 

The  notion  of  the  Vernunft-Allgemeinheit  thus  introduced  re- 
ceives a  lengthy  development  in  the  "  Logik."  The  way  for  this 
Allgemeinheit  des  Begriffes  is  prepared,  in  the  larger  "  Logik," 
by  elaborate  discussions  under  the  head  of  Wesen  (that  is,  in  Part 
Second  of  the  work).  In  the  second  division  of  Wesen,  in  dis- 

that  for  Hegel  both  abstract  characters  and  abstract  individuals  are  to  be 
treated  alike,  iu  so  far  as  they  have  their  truth  only  in  the  organic  whole 
of  which  they  are  elements.  Compare  once  more  Falckenberg's  definition 
of  Hegel's  use  of  "  concrete,"  as  given  above.  That  the  Individual  is  con- 
tained in  the  Universal  is  also  expressly  asserted  by  Hegel  ( Werke,  vol.  vi. 
p.  323  ;  compare  p.  316). 

1  Encyclop.,  Werke,  vol.  vi.  p.  340. 

2  Id.,  p.  339.     In  case  of  the  form  of  logical  judgment  which  Hegel  is 
discussing  in  the  passage  now  cited,  he  is  laying  special  stress  upon  the  fact 
that  here  already,  although  the  true  Vernunft-Allgemeinheit  has  not  been 
fully  reached,  the  individual  stands  in  relation  to  others,  and  is  not  con- 
«eiv«irt  by  himself,  or  apart  from  his  relations. 


602  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

cussing  the  Erscheinung,  Hegel  shows,  in  a  fashion  which  he 
was  elsewhere  fond  of  dwelling  upon,  and  illustrating,  that  the 
qualities  or  Eigenscliaften  of  every  finite  thing  are  its  Weisen 
des  Verhaltens  zu  Andern  ; l  so  that  all  the  things  of  the  finite 
world  are  what  they  are  by  virtue  of  their  relations  to  one  an- 
other. They  are  in  Wechselwirkung?  and  it  is  their  nature  to 
be  so.  Hence  the  world  of  these  finite  things  is  a  world  of  a 
Gesetz,  or  all-embracing  law,  of  which  the  things  and  qualities 
are  the  appearance,  while  this  Gesetz  or  Reich  der  Gesetze  is  a 
self-determined  Totalitat.  As  the  law  at  the  basis  of  the  finite 
world  is,  however,  fully  expressed,  but  only  expressed  in  the 
phenomena  themselves,  the  result  here  is  an  Einheit  des  Innern 
und  des  Aeussern  wherein,  as  Hegel  tells  us,  the  Begriff  is 
already  present  in  a  latent  form  ;  for  our  world  of  finite  things 
is  thus  a  totality  of  interrelated  individuals  that  embody  a 
law  and  make  it  manifest.  It  is,  however,  just  this  Totalitat 
that  im  Begriff e  als  solchem  appears  as  das  Allgemeine*  In 
the  world  of  Wesen  this  unity  of  inner  and  outer  is  so  far  called 
die  Wirklichkeit.*  The  true  nature  of  Wirklichkeit  appears 
in  the  exposition  of  the  category  of  Substanz  at  the  end  of 
Wesen,  where  finally  die  absolute  Substanz,  or  general  nature 
of  things,  appears  as  a  "  Totality  "  that  is  as  a  "  simple  Whole," 
which  determines  itself  "  and  contains  its  self-determinations  in 
itself."  This  Totality  is  das  Allgemeine,  which,  together  with 
its  correlated  categories,  das  Einzelne  and  das  Besondere,  makes 
up  the  Begriff,  to  which  Hegel  herewith  passes. 

The  intricate  exposition  of  the  Begriff,  in  the  third  part  of 
the  "  Logik,"  is  rendered  somewhat  clearer  by  the  lecture  notes 
which  were  added  by  Hegel's  editors  to  the  corresponding  para- 
graphs of  the  "  Encyklopadie."  From  these  one  or  two  quota- 
tions have  been  made  in  the  text.  It  is  perhaps  enough  to  point 
out  here  that  one  best  and  most  easily  sees  what  the  Begriff  is 
meant  to  be  if  one  passes  forthwith  to  the  place  where  its  nature 
is  "writ  large"  in  the  world  of  Objektivitatf6  into  which  it 

1  Logik,  Werke,  vol.  iv.  p.  125. 

*  Id.,  p.  128. 

8  Logik,  Werke,  vol.  iv.  p.  174. 

4  Id.,  p.  178.  Die  Wirklichkeit  appears  first  as  das  Absolute,  which  corr» 
Spends  (loc.  cit.  pp.  187-190)  to  Spinoza's  Substance. 

*  Logik,  Werke,  vol.  v.,  pp.  167-228  j  Encydop.,  Werke,  vol.  vi.  pp.  365-384 


APPENDIX  C.  503 

"  passes  over,"  and  in  which  it  expresses  itself.  Here  one  has 
a  repetition  on  a  higher  stage  of  what  took  place  in  Wesen. 
Once  more  one  deals  with  a  world  of  objects,  only  now  they  are 
known  to  embody  the  Begriff,  whose  true  universality  they  show 
in  three  ascending  phases,  mechanism,  chemism,  and  teleology. 
The  world  of  mechanism,  or,  as  one  might  say,  the  world  ac 
"  Machine/'  is  the  world  whose  parts  have  indeed  interrelation- 
ships,  but  only  those  of  abstract  law.  In  the  world  of  "  affini- 
ties "  or  of  "  Chemism,"  the  individuals  exist  only  as  interrelated, 
and  only  by  virtue  of  their  affinities  and  the  results  of  these. 
In  the  still  truer  and  more  inclusive  world  of  "  Teleology,"  or, 
as  one  might  say,  in  the  world  as  "  Organism,"  the  interrelated- 
ness  of  the  individual  objects  and  their  cooperation  as  instru- 
ments of  one  immanent  purpose,  which  is  their  true  universal, 
prepares  the  way  for  that  complete  union  of  Begriff  and  Objekt 
which  is  given  us  in  the  Idee.  The  Idee,  in  fact,  is  the  world 
as  "  Person  "  so  far  as  the  categories  of  the  "  Logik  "  enable  the 
notion  of  personality  to  be  introduced.  The  full  notion  of  person- 
ality is  developed!,  later  in  the  system,  in  the  philosophy  of  spirit. 
These  Hegelian  formulations  of  the  theory  of  universals  have 
no  doubt  many  antiquated  features.  Their  presence  and  impor- 
tance in  the  system  is  indubitable.  As  pointed  out  in  my  text, 
the  most  interesting  expressions  of  the  whole  doctrine  occur  in 
Hegel's  ethical  and  theological  works.  A  full  collection  of  pas- 
sages is  impossible  in  the  present  space.  A  few  more  may  yet 
be  given.  It  is  an  explicit  and  deliberate  application  of  the 
theory  of  the  organic  universal  when  Hegel  says,  in  his  "  Rechts- 
philosophie,"  that  the  individual  man  is  no  person  "  ohne  Rela- 
tion zu  anderen  Personen."  *  This  notion,  closely  related  to  that 
of  the  Allgemeinheit  des  Bewusstseins  mentioned  in  the  text, 
appears  very  prominently  in  the  whole  structure  of  the  "  Rechts- 
philosophie."  It  is  another  application  of  this  same  theory  when 
Hegel  says,  in  the  "  Religionsphilosophie,"  in  describing  the  life 
of  the  church,  that  the  subjective  religious  consciousness  has  to 
be  realized  by  eine  Vielheit  von  Subjekten  und  Individuen,  but 
that,  since  this  consciousness  is  to  be  universal  in  the  deeper 

1  Werke,  vol.  viii.,  p.  417.  Cf.  p.  110:  "Es  ist  durch  die  Vernunft 
ebenso  nothwendig  das.s  die  Menschen  in  Vertrags-Verhaltnisse  eingehen 
Jtls  duss  sie  £igoutliuiu  Lusitzeu." 


604  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN   PHILOSOPHY. 

sense,  '•  so  ist  die  Vielheit  der  Individuen  durchaus  zu  setzen  ala 
nur  ein  Schein,  und  eben  dieses,  dass  sie  sich  selbst  als  diesen 
Schein  setzt,  ist  die  Einheit  des  Glaubens.  .  .  .  Das  ist  die 
Liebe  der  Gemeinde,  die  aus  vielen  Subjekten  zu  bestehen 
scheint,  welche  Vielheit  aber  nur  ein  Schein  ist."  *  "  Many  mem- 
bers," then,  but  only  one  body,  one  Lord,  one  faith.  Further 
on  Hegel  discusses  in  the  same  spirit  the  relation  of  the  individ- 
uals to  their  universal  as  illustrated  by  the  relation  of  the  faith- 
ful to  the  pei-son  of  Christ.  The  application  of  the  same  theory 
of  universals  to  the  general  problem  of  the  relation  of  God  to 
the  world  appears  at  the  close  of  the  "  Encyklopadie."  The  "  Na- 
turphilosophie  "  is  also  full  of  applications  :  so,  for  instance,  the 
explanation  of  the  relations  of  the  sexes,  and  of  the  struggle  of 
the  various  species  of  animals  for  existence,  as  in  both  cases  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  universal  can  nowhere  completely  realize  itself 
in  any  one  individual,  or  in  any  group  of  individuals.3  Since,  ac- 
cording to  Hegel,  the  Idee  cannot  come  to  full  expression  in  outer 
nature,  the  Universal  is  in  all  these  cases  displayed  to  us  only 
imperfectly,  as  an  endless  series  of  efforts  towards  the  completely 
organic,  which  is  perfectly  realized  only  in  the  world  as  spirit. 

To  return,  finally,  for  one  moment,  to  the  logical  theory  it- 
self :  It  is  the  immanently  organic  nature  of  the  true  universal 
that  in  the  doctrine  of  the  subjektiven  Begriff  forces  the  Begrijf 
to  develop  its  various  Seiten  in  the  Urtheil,  since  only  by  vir- 
tue of  the  relation  of  apparently  divided,  but  really  and  organi- 
cally inseparable,  aspects  or  individuals  can  any  universality 
be  realized.  Of  Urtheile  the  highest  sort,  before  the  class  in 
the  Urtheile  des  Begriffes  proper  is  reached,  is  the  disjuno 
tive  judgments,  just  because  they  represent  the'  Unterschiede 
or  Besonderungen  of  their  subjects  as  in  every  case  an  inter- 
related group  of  species  or  of  individuals.8  For  "  das  Allge- 
meine  ist  das  Einf ache  welches  ebensosehr  das  Reichste  in  sich 

1  Werke,  vol.  xii.,  pp.  313,  314.    The  important  thing  here  is  that  Hegel 
expressly  regards  this  as  an  application  of  his  logical  theory.     Compare 
p.  309. 

2  Werke,  vol.  vii.,  1,  pp.  640,  641,  643,  645,  648,  649.     In  particular,  p. 
648,  *'  Die  Gattung  existirt  in  einer  Reihe  von  einzelnen  Lebendigen,"  -» 
not  in  any  single  individual. 

8  Werke,  vol.  v.f  pp.  102-107. 


APPENDIX  C.  505 

Belbst  ist,"  *  and  this  wealth  of  the  universal  gets  unfolded  in 
the  disjunctive  judgment.  The  universal  is  die  Negativitat 
uberhaupt ; 2  and  this  self-differentiation  gets  an  expression  in 
the  disjunctive  judgment.  It  is  the  Begriff  itself  that  sich  dis- 
jungirt  in  the  true  disjunctive  judgment.8  But  the  genuine 
UrtheU  des  Begriffes  is  something  still  higher,  since  not  only 
the  fact,  but  the  inner  necessity  and  self-determination  of  this 
differentiation  must  be  made  evident,  a  thing  which  can  only  be 
done  by  forms  of  judgment  that  carry  us  on  to  the  Schiuss* 
The  Schluss  passes  through  a  number  of  successive  forms  whose 
highest  is  the  disjunctive  conclusion,6  wherein  once  more  the 
reason  for  the  result  reached  by  the  conclusion  lies  in  the  rela- 
tion of  one  included  member  or  Moment  of  some  universal  to  the 
universal  itself,  and  to  the  other  members  or  Momente  of  the 
same  organic  and  self-differentiated  whole.  With  the  disjunc- 
tive conclusion  the  transition  is  made  to  the  world  of  Objektwi- 
tiit,  where,  as  before  shown,  the  universal  is  realized  in  expli- 
citly organic  form  as  the  totality  of  the  related  individuals  or 
Momente,  whose  perfection  and  truth  is  the  Idee. 

One  word  still  in  conclusion  as  to  the  relation  of  the  lower  or 
Aristotelian  form  of  the  "  universal  of  the  understanding,"  to 
Hegel's  own  "  universal  of  the  reason."  Hegel  himself  says :  8 
"  The  logic  of  the  mere  understanding  is  contained  in  the  logic 
of  reason,  and  can  be  made  at  once  therefrom.  Nothing  is 
needed  for  this  purpose  but  the  omission  from  the  latter  of  the 
dialectical  and  so  distinctively  rational  element."  It  is  well  to 
observe  that,  as  Hegel  himself  has  confessed,  in  one  of  liis  let- 
ters to  Niethammer,7  it  was  according  to  this  method  that  he 
felt  himself  obliged  to  proceed  in  the  exposition  of  his  logic, 

*Id,p  36. 

*  Id.,  p.  39.  Readers  of  the  discussion  of  Negativitat  in  the  text  will 
Bee  the  significance  of  this  consideration. 

«  Id.,  p.  105.  *  Id.,  p.  115,  sqq. 

6  Id.,  p.  162,  sqq. 

6  Encyclop.,  Werke,  vol.  vi.  p.  158  :  "  In  der  spekulativen  Logik  ist  die 
blosse  Verstandes-Logik  enthalten,  nnd  kann  ans  jener  sog-leich  pemacht 
•werden ;  es  bedarf  dazu  Nichts  als  daraus  das  Dialektische  ui.d  Verniiuf- 
tige  wegzulassen." 

7  See  the  recently  issued  vol.  xix.  of  the   Werke.  edited  by  Karl  Hegel 
(Leipzig,  1887),  part  i.  p.  340. 


506  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

which  he  undertook  for  the  boys  in  the  Nttrnberg  gymnasium. 
Only  die  verstandige  Logik,  he  tells  Niethammer,  is  suited  to 
gymnasial  instruction.  Youth  at  this  time  needs  purely  posi- 
tiven  Inhalt  and  is  not  ripe  for  das  Spekulative.  The  dialecti- 
cal can  he  only  here  and  there  suggested,  and  never  correctly 
presented  in  such  elementary  work.  Hence  it  happens  that  in 
the  so-called  Propaedeutik,  which  Rosenkranz  edited  from  He- 
gel's posthumous  MSS  and  published  in  1840  as  the  eighteenth 
volume  of  the  "  Werke,"  and  which  contains  the  gist  of  Hegel's 
instruction  to  the  boys  at  Niirnberg,  one  finds  but  few  hints  of 
the  Hegelian  theory  of  Universals.  If  this  little  volume,  in 
fact,  were  our  only  record  of  Hegel,  all  his  peculiar  theories, 
whether  as  to  Idealism  in  general  or  as  to  the  nature  of  Self- 
consciousness,  or  as  to  Universals,  would  remain  almost  wholly 
unknown  to  us ;  and  such  theories  must  not  be  sought  there, 
but  in  Hegel's  own  deliberate  expressions  of  them,  and  above  all 
in  the  works  which  he  himself  published  during  his  life. 


INDEX. 


Absolute,  tlie,  with  Kant,  139,  142- 
145  ;  with  Fichte,  159,  160,  192  ; 
with  Schelling,  184,  193;  with 
Hegel,  213-216,  221 ;  with  Scho- 
penhauer, 239,  240,  253,  263,  264. 
See  Self,  absolute. 

Adickes,  Erich,  Kant's  "  Kritik  der 
Keinen  Vernunft "  edited  by,  483, 
491. 

Agassiz,  embryological  studies  of, 
286. 

Aggregation,  process  of,  324,  325. 

Agnosticism,  its  relation  to  idealism, 
344-349,  448. 

Amos,  the  prophet,  a  false  religious 
optimism  condemned  by,  447, 448, 
458,  459. 

Analogies  of  experience,  488. 

Analysis,  self-,  as  characteristic  of 
the  eighteenth-century  philosophy, 
33,  80-82,  93,  101. 

Analytic  and  synthetic  aspects  of 
idealism,  350,  351,  364. 

Anthropomorphism,  doctrine  of,  345, 
427. 

Antinomies,  cosmological,  Kant,  123 ; 
their  source,  420 ;  in  the  spiritual 
world,  437-i40. 

Apperception,  transcendental  unity 
of,  484-41U. 

Appreciation,  distinction  between, 
and  description,  in  ordinary  real- 
ism, 387-389 ;  its  formless  and  un- 
categorized  character,  390,  391 ; 
illustrated  from  Shelley,  393 ;  from 
Schiller,  393 ;  that  outer  truth  is 
not  given  by  appreciation  is  the 
presupposition  of  natural  science, 
390,  395;  a  possible  real  world 
of,  393-397 ;  exemplified  by  the  or- 
ganic unity  of  the  spiritual  world, 
105-410;  its  categories  those  of 


self -consciousness,  411;  a  world  of 
ideals,  412 ;  presupposed  by  the 
world  of  description,  410,  413-415. 
See  Aspect,  double ;  Description. 

A  priori  principles,  of  empirical  sci- 
ence, 398. 

Aristotle,  the  writings  of,  and  Plato, 
interpret  Hellenic  life,  9;  the 
founder  of  the  logic  of  the  under- 
standing, 494,  496,  505. 

Art,  Schopenhauer's  theory  of,  255— 
257. 

Ashley,  Lord  Anthony,  later  Earl  of 
Shaf  tesbury,  a  friend  of  Locke,  78. 

Aspect,  double,  doctrine  of,  415-419 ; 
applied  to  the  facts  of  the  inor- 
ganic world,  419-422 ;  to  the  prob- 
lem of  evolution,  422-428 ;  to  the 
problem  of  freedom,  428-434. 

Astronomy,  the  progress  of,  312. 

Atoms,  the  nature  of,  393,  399. 

Axioms,  of  Spinoza,  questioned  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  69-70; 
of  natural  science,  relate  to  the 
world  of  description,  397-404. 

Bacon,  475. 

Baer,  von,  embryological  researches 
of,  286. 

Beethoven,  172. 

Begriff,  the  Hegelian,  221,  222,  500- 
506. 

Being,  Berkeley's  theory  of,  87-90 ; 
the  nature  of,  Kar*  124,  125, 
485-488 ;  Hegel's  theory  of,  218- 
227,  492-506. 

Belief,  true  and  false,  374-378. 

Berkeley,  Bishop,  idealism  of,  a  de- 
velopment of  eighteenth-century 
humanism,  33,  71  ;  type  of  char- 
acter, 86,  87 ;  his  theory  of  vision, 
88-89,  475  ;  the  being  of  sensible 


508 


INDEX. 


things,  to  ho  perceived,  87, 90 ;  his 
doctrine  an  extension  of  Locke's, 
90 ;  the  sources  of  ideas,  91 ;  an 
omnipresent  eternal  mind,  91 ;  at- 
tractive form  of  his  idealism,  91, 
92  ;  relation  of  his  doctrine  to  the 
rediscovery  of  the  inner  life,  93, 
851 ;  his  "  Principles  of  Human 
Knowledge,"  93,  475. 

Berlin,  as  a  centre  of  German  liter- 
ary interest,  17U. 

Bible,  the,  modern  critical  study  of, 
45. 

Boeckh,  282. 

Boehme,  475. 

Bourne,  H.  R.  P.,  "  Life  of  Locke," 
by,  475. 

Brown,  John,  Kant  the,  of  nine- 
teenth century  speculative  war- 
fare, 138. 

Browning,  delight  of,  in  the  para- 
doxes of  passion,  261 ;  "  perfec- 
tion in  imperfection,"  454. 

Bruno,  475. 

Byron,  478. 

Caird,  Edward,  "  Philosophy  of  Irn- 
manuel  Kant "  by,  cited,  108,  478 ; 
"  Life  of  Hegel  "  by,  cited,  195, 
479;  "Social  Philosophy  of  Au- 
gustus Comte  "  by,  cited,  499. 

Caird,  John,  "Spinoza"  by,  475; 
•'Philosophy  of  Religion"  by, 
quoted.  496-499. 

Campanella,  475. 

Caprice,  an  element  of,  in  the  com- 
mon selfhood  of  idealism,  236 ; 
doctrine  of,  by  Schopenhauer,  237- 
240,  263-264;  the,  of  the  highest 
reason,  429. 

Caroline  Schlegel,  181 ;  wife  of  Schel- 
ling,  182 ;  her  remarkable  letters, 
185 ;  motto  in  verse  by,  for  Fichte, 
183;  Fichte's  genius  and  Schel- 
ling's  contrasted  by,  183,  184. 

Carus,  Paul,  "  Fundamental  Princi- 
ples" by,  cited,  3;)8. 

Categories,  Kant's,  forms  of  thought, 
127-131 ;  the,  of  Hegel,  218-222 ; 
the,  of  the  world  of  description, 
397-404;  of  the  world  of  appre- 
ciation, 411-415.  See  Deduction 
of  the  categories. 

Causation,  origin  of  the  conception, 
Hume,  94-97 ;  doctrine  of  Scho- 
penhauer, 250,  251 ;  physical,  in- 

,     sufficient  to  explain  the  history  of 


the  world,  290,  425,  426;  axiom 
of,  belongs  to  the  world  of  descrip- 
tion, 344-348,  400-404 ;  no  appli- 
cation to  world  of  appreciation, 
348, 413-415 ;  reality  is  the  world- 
self,  348-350,  415-422. 

Certainty,  Descartes'  quest  for,  75- 
78. 

Chance,  brute,  the  deepest  problem 
of  evil,  465-469;  our,  the  ration- 
ality of  the  Infinite,  469-472. 

Change.  See  Evolution,  Nature  and 
Evolution. 

Christopher,  St.,  his  service  of  God, 
53. 

Christianity,  essence  of,  embodied  in 
speculative  theory,  143-145. 

Civilization,  progress  of,  7-12,  281- 
287. 

Clearness,  essential  in  thought, 
Locke,  83. 

Clifford,  W.  K.,  "  The  First  and  Last 
Catastrophe,"  a  lecture  by,  cited, 
318 ;  his  theory  of  a  definable  end- 
less process  for  the  physical  uni- 
verse, 318-324 ;  difficulties  of  hia 
hypothesis,  324-336. 

"  Cogito,  ergo  sum,"  famous  princi- 
ple of  Descartes,  76. 

Coleridge,  478. 

Conscience,  doctrine  of,  Kant,  112- 
118. 

Consciousness,  discussion  of  human, 
by  Locke,  82-86 ;  relation  of,  to 
outer  reality,  Berkeley,  93  ;  space 
and  time,  conditions  of,  Kant, 
123-125 ;  "  all  consciousness  is 
RTI  appeal  to  other  consciousness," 
Hegel,  2U8-210;  paradox  of,  210- 
215 ;  analysis  of,  the  problem  of 
modern  idealism,  232,  233 ;  a  re- 
sult of  evolution,  mind -stuff 
theory,  311 ;  twofold  character 
of,  406,  407,  411,  419-434;  rela- 
tion of  empirical  and  transcenden- 
tal, 483-488.  See  Self-conscious- 
ness. 

Consciousness,  religious,  twofold  in- 
terests of,  46-48 ;  contemplative 
form  of,  Spinoza  and  the  "  Imita- 
tion," 49-57, 09  ;  the  perfection  of 
the  divine  substance,  Spinoza,  58— 
66 ;  active  form  of.  Kant,  1 1 1- 1 18 ; 
Fichte's  theism,  160-162 ;  Hegel's 
paradox.  203-218;  transcends 
time,  in  world  of  appreciation, 
425-428,  457-461. 


INDEX. 


509 


Constructive  imagination,  office  of, 
Kant,  130,  139. 

Contraction,  as  a  source  of  heat,  315. 

Copernicus,  Kant  the,  of  philosophy, 
311. 

Cosmology,  problems  of  a  philosophi- 
cal, 381. 

Courage,  spiritual,  117. 

"Critique  of  the  Pure  Reason," 
Kant's  publication  of,  34,  68,  107, 
476, 483 ;  its  essential  thought,  34 ; 
phases  in  study  of,  102-105 ;  its 
early  influence,  108,  148;  its  de- 
structive and  constructive  effects, 
111.  See  Kant. 

Crusaders,  spirit  of,  229. 

Curiosity,  different  forms  of,  6-12. 

Cynicism,  wonderful  temperament 
of,  in  Spinoza,  56 ;  occasional,  of 
Fiohte,  149. 

Darwin,  his  power  of  detailed  inves- 
tigation, 78 ;  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution, and  his  "  Origin  of  Spe- 
cies," 284-287. 

Declaration  of  Independence,  275. 

Deduction  of  the  categories,  Kant's, 
126-131 ;  the  Kantian  doctrine,  a 
development,  Falckenberg,  483- 
486 ;  Vaihinger,  486-488 ;  Erdmann, 
489 ;  neutral  formulation  of  Kant's 
results,  490,  491.  See  Categories. 

Descartes,  a  representative  thinker 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  29, 
475 ;  his  philosophic  doubt,  29, 75 ; 
"  Cogito,  ergo  sum,"  his  princi- 
ple of  absolute  certainty,  76 ;  his 
system  of  innate  truths,  75—77 ; 
problem  of  their  multiplicity,  77, 
78. 

Description,  the  world  of,  the  outer 
or  natural  order,  383, 395 ;  its  per- 
manent and  universal  elements, 
384-388 ;  the  test  of  its  objectiv- 
ity, similarity  of  human  experi- 
ence, 387,  388 ;  the  test  of  similar 
experience,  the  sameness  of  de- 
scription, 388 ;  describable  expe- 
rience, reproducible  and  under 
forms  or  categories,  390-395 ;  de- 
duction of  the  categories  of,  397- 
404;  not  the  whole  of  the  real 
world,  405—408 ;  contrast  of,  and 
the  world  of  appreciation,  395, 
396,  409-415,  424-428  ;  real  in  so 
far  as  it  is  an  aspect  of  the  world 
of  the  Logos,  416-423,  432-434. 


Design,  old  argument  of,  92 ;  physi- 
cal world  symbolic  of  the,  of  the 
Logos,  421-424. 

Diderot,  81. 

Dilemma,  the,  either  idealism  or  the 
unknowable,  364-368. 

Dinge  an  sick,  Kant's,  unknowable, 
131,  476,  484,  485. 

Distance,  infinite,  difficulties  of,  in 
Clifford's  statement  of  an  endlessly 
consolidating  world,  332-334. 

Dogmatism,  Kant's  relation  to,  115- 
119. 

Doubt,  philosophical,  fruitful  peri- 
ods of,  71-74;  Cartesian,  29,  75; 
ablest  expression  of,  by  Hume, 
93-98 ;  lesson  of,  98-100 ;  Kantian, 
115-119,  126-132,  477;  involves 
the  larger  self,  378-379;  the,  of 
genuine  pessimism,  463—469;  an- 
swered, 469-471. 

Duty,  emphasized  by  Kant,  112- 
114. 

Eclecticism,  16. 

Ego,  the,  Fichte,  156-160. 

Emerson's  "Brahma,"  99. 

Emotions,  human,  explanation  of,  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  28 ;  the 
romantic  spirit,  174. 

Energy,  redistributions  of  matter 
and,  313-315, 337 ;  law  of  degrada- 
tion of,  and  evolution,  316-318, 
337  ;  Clifford's  theory  of  a  defin- 
able endless  process,  318-336 ;  the 
world  of  the  "  running  down,"  not 
the  final  truth,  337-340,  421. 

"Epicurean  Confession  of  Faith  of 
Hans  Bristleback,"  Schilling's, 
186 ;  its  clear  statement  of  the 
Naturphilosophie,  186;  the  poem. 
187-189. 

Erdmann,  Benno,  his  "Reflexionen 
Kant's  zur  Kritischen  Philoso- 
phic," cited,  107,  119,  122,  123, 
125,  126,  486,  489. 

"  Essay  on  tho  Human  Undenstand- 
ing,"  Locke's,  publication  of,  78, 
475 ;  history  of,  in  its  preface, 
79,  80 ;  its  historical  influence,  80, 
81;  its  doctrine,  81-86.  See 
Locke. 

Error,  involves  the  larger  self,  376- 
378. 

Ethics,  English,  of  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, a  development  of  the  netf 
humanism,  33;  the  "Ethics"  o> 


510 


INDEX. 


Spinoza,  cited,  58,  60,  61,  62,  64, 
475 ;  quoted,  66,  67. 

Euclid,  Hegelian  categories  not  com- 
prehensible by  definitions  of,  218. 

European  thought,  transformed,  80, 
84. 

Events,  predetermined,  Spinoza,  63 ; 
character  of,  in  the  world  of  de- 
scription, 387-404  ;  in  the  world  of 
appreciation,  405-415. 

Evil,  attitude  towards,  of  Spinoza, 
64;  of  Kant,  115-117 ;  problem  of, 
437-441 ;  an  illusion,  Lanier,  442- 
447 ;  and  mystical  resignation,  450, 
451 ;  and  pessimism,  452 ;  the  syn- 
thesis, ' '  perfection  in  imperfec- 
tion," 454-461,  469-471. 

fivolution,  rise  of  the  doctrine  of, 
Lecture  IX;  transition  from  ro- 
mantic idealism  to  modern  realism 
in  Schopenhauer,  264-266;  the 
return  not  an  abandonment  of 
idealism,  266-270 ;  science  thereby 
enriched,  270-272 ;  evolution  a 
postulate  of  idealistic  interpreta- 
tion, 273-276;  modern  historical 
spirit  an  outgrowth  of  romanti- 
cism, 276-285;  Darwin's  "Origin 
of  Species,"  285,  286;  his  natural 
selection  and  the  transformation  of 
species,  287 ;  conflict  of  physical 
necessity  and  historical  ideals,  288 ; 
problem  of  the  philosophy  of  evo- 
lution, 288-291;  synthesis,  291- 
294 ;  Spencer's  "  Formula  of  Evo- 
lution," 294-298 ;  his  Unknowable, 
298 ;  result  of  his  system,  299, 300 ; 
monistic  doctrines,  300, 304 ;  mind- 
Btuff  theory,  301-303 ;  the  deeper 
self,  304-307.  See  Nature  and 
Evolution. 

Experience,  the  basis  of  all  know- 
ledge, Locke,  83,  84;  the  world 
of,  a  world  of  ideas,  Berkeley,  87- 
91 ;  furnishes  all  the  materials  of 
thought,  Hume,  94 ;  must  conform 
to  the  forms  of  thought,  Kant, 
127,  844 ;  due  to  caprice  of  world 
•will,  Schopenhauer,  239 ;  agnostic 
view  of,  344—347 ;  in  every,  the 
absolute  self,  348-350;  nature 
of,  in  the  world  of  description, 
387-395,  398-404;  the  reality  of 
th }  world  of  appreciation,  395-397, 
404-415. 

Explanation  and  cause,  the  same, 
Spinoza,  59. 


Faith,  not  a  dogma  but  an  active 
postulate,  Kant,  115-117. 

Falckenberg,  his  view  of  the  Kant* 
ian  deduction,  483-486. 

"  Faust,"  Goethe's,  a  product  of  the 
revolutionary  period,  99;  quoted, 
100,  439. 

Feeling,  a  guide  to  reason,  romanti- 
cists, 175. 

Fichte,  the  significance  of  Kantian 
doctrine,  135-189 ;  its  transforma- 
tion the  common  task  of  Fichte, 
Schelling,  and  Hegel,  139-145 ;  his 
career  and  temperament,  146-151 ; 
ransomed  from  Spinozism  by  Kant, 
151,  152  ;  rejects  Kant's  things  in 
themselves,  152;  principles  of  his 
"Subjective  Idealism,"  152,153; 
its  essence,  "ethical  idealism," 
154-156 ;  the  true  self,  an  infinite 
moral  will,  156-160 ;  theism  of  his 
"  Vocation  of  Man,"  160, 161 ;  out- 
come of  his  doctrine,  162,  163. 
Summary  of  lecture,  477,  478. 

Finite,  the,  depreciation  of,  by  the 
"  Imitation,"  52  ;  reality  of  the  in- 
finite in  multiplicity  of,  140-142. 

Fitzgerald,  stanzas  from  "  Omar 
Khayyam  "  of,  438. 

"Fool's  Prayer,  The,"  by  Edward 
Rowland  Sill,  465,  466. 

"Fourfold  Root  of  the  Principle 
of  Sufficient  Reason,"  Schopen- 
hauer's, 250. 

Frauenst&dt,  "  Arthur  Schopen- 
hauer "  by,  480. 

Freedom  of  the  will,  denied,  Spi- 
noza, 58-60 ;  as  affirmed,  by  Kant, 
131 ;  by  Fichte,  148.  See  Physical 
law  and  Freedom. 

French  Revolution,  demonstrates  the 
importance  of  passion,  34. 

Galileo,  his  relation  to  modern  phys- 
ical science,  28, 38 ;  his  verification 
of  hypothesis  by  experiment,  38, 
39 ;  influence  of  his  method  upon 
philosophy,  39,  40. 

Genius,  with  the  romanticists,  171 ; 
often  a  pathological  background 
to,  243. 

Germany,  intellectual  situation  in, 
before  the  Battle  of  Waterloo, 
276-281 ;  after  the  triumph  over 
Napoleon,  146,  281-284. 

Geology,  modern,  its  indebtedness  t* 
the  British  mind,  285. 


INDEX. 


511 


Geometry,  the  model  science,  in 
seventeenth  century,  40, 41 ;  mathe- 
matical method  of  Spinoza,  58-65 ; 
innate,  Descartes,  77 ;  nature  must 
obey,  Kant,  122,  126;  laws  of, 
probably  not  ultimate  truths,  Clif- 
ford, 336. 

God,  doctrine  of  Spinoza,  60,  61 ; 
argument  for  the  existence  of, 
Descartes,  76 ;  presence  of,  Berke- 
ley, 92 ;  insufficiency  of  human 
reason,  Hume,  94;  Kant's  postu- 
late of  existence  of,  131 ;  the  moral 
order,  Fichte,  160;  Hegel's  abso- 
lute, 214-216 ;  with  Schopenhauer, 
255.  See  Logos. 

Goethe,  his  admiration  for  the  works 
of  Spinoza,  41,  42 ;  and  Fichte, 
151 ;  and  Schiller,  at  Weimar,  170, 
171.  See  "Faust." 

Gravitative  system,  an  imagined,  322 ; 
its  effects,  323,  328,  329. 

Greek  life,  essence  of,  in  writings  of 
Plato  and  Aristotle,  9. 

Green  and  Grose,  Hume's  philosophi- 
cal works  edited  by,  476. 

Grimms,  the,  232. 

Gwinner,  "  Schopenhauer's  Leben " 
by,  476. 

Habit,  basis  of  the  idea  of  cause, 
Hume,  95-98. 

Hamlet,  276,  354,  356. 

Harris,  W.  J.,  "  Hegel's  Logic  "  by, 
479. 

Hartmann,  von,  acknowledgment  to, 
440. 

Haym,  "  Hegel  und  seine  Zeit "  by, 
479. 

Hegel,  transition  from  Schelling  to, 
191-194 ;  his  career  and  tempera- 
ment, 194-202, 478, 479 ;  his  "  Pha- 
nomenologie  des  Geistes,"  202, 
215 ;  the  paradox  of  self -conscious- 
ness, 202-204 ;  illustrated  by  mem- 
ory, 205, 206 ;  an  analogy  in  social 
life,  207,  208 ;  "  All  consciousness 
an  appeal  to  other  consciousness," 
208 ;  the  process  of  self -differen- 
tiation, 209,  210;  analogy  in  the 
spiritual  life,  210-212 ;  the  law  of 
the  universal  Negativitat,  213, 214 ; 
the  absolute,  215,  216 ;  theoretical 
significance  of  his  doctrine,  216- 
218;  the  "Logik,"  218,  219;  its 
dialectical  method  applied  to 
quantity,  219-221 ;  his  doctrine  of 


Beffriffe,  221-224,  492-506;  the 
divine  Idee,  224—227 ;  his  his- 
torical relation  to  Schopenhauer, 
240, 259, 260, 455, 456.  Summary 
of  lecture  and  works,  479.  See 
Universals. 

Heine,  sketch  of  Kant's  daily  life 
by,  108,  109;  his  "Buch  der 
Leider,' '  155 ;  his  position  in  Ger- 
man literature,  169 ;  "  History  of 
German  Thought  and  Literature  " 
by,  478. 

"  Heinrich  Ofterdingen,"  Schlegel's, 
178. 

Heraclitns,  156. 

Herder,  106,  108. 

Heredity,  view  of  Descartes,  77; 
view  of  Locke,  79. 

Historical  spirit,  modern,  the  out- 
come of  the  romantic  movement, 
273-281 ;  assumes  definite  form 
after  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  281- 
285. 

Hobbes,  his  merit  as  a  thinker,  30, 58. 

Hoffmann,  180. 

"  Holy  Grail,"  97,  156,  465. 

Huggins,  Dr.,  address  of,  upon 
Astronomy,  312-314. 

Humboldt,  Wilhelm  von,  the  BhS- 
gavat-gita  expounded  by,  278. 

Humanity,  task  of  idealism  to  spir- 
itualize, 271 ;  the  deeper  self  an 
epitome  of  its  history,  283. 

Hume,  his  philosophical  rank,  93 ;  his 
extension  of  Locke's  empiricism, 
94,  95,  101 ;  the  idea  of  causation 
founded  on  habit  by,  96,  97  ;  sig- 
nificance of  his  doctrine,  97-100, 
101,  136  ;  awakens  Kant  from  his 
"  dogmatic  slumber,"  105,  125— 
127;  his  works,  476. 

Ibsen,  the  drama  "  Emperor  and 
Galilean  "  by,  quoted,  36-38. 

Ideal,  Kant's,  132,  133. 

Idealism,  analytic,  of  Berkeley,  33, 
71,  87-92,  351 ;  transcendental, 
of  Kant,  122-124,  477,  484-491; 
transformation  of  Kant's  doctrine, 
the  aim  of  post-Kantian,  139-145. 
162,  233;  subjective,  of  Fichte, 
152-154;  objective,  of  Schelling, 
183-186,  192,  478;  absolute,  of 
Hegel,  203-225,  492-506;  ideal- 
ism on  a  Kantian  basis,  Schopen- 
hauer, 237-240,  265 ;  task  of  con* 
structive.  235,  236,  268-282,  33^ 


512 


INDEX. 


344-350;  nature  of  analytic,  350- 
363;  of  synthetic,  364-386;  the 
Logos,  415-434,  436-440,  454-461, 
469-471.  Summary  of  positive 
lectures,  480-482.  See  Logos, 
Reality,  and  Idealism. 

Ideals,  the  world  of  appreciation  a 
•world  of,  412 ;  the  mechanism  of 
nature  symbolizes  a  world  of,  426. 

Ideas,  innate,  problem  of,  74,  75  ; 
affirmed  by  Descartes,  76-78, 
denied  by  Locke,  79 ;  their  origin, 
in  sensation  and  reflection,  Locke, 
83,  84 ;  the  sense-world  a  world 
of,  Berkeley,  87-92,  350 ;  theory 
of  Hume,  94-97.  See  Idealism. 

Idee,  the  absolute,  of  Hegel,  221- 
224,  492-506. 

Illusion,  all  phenomenal  plurality  an, 
Schopenhauer,  266 ;  behind  the, 
a  deeper  self,  307. 

Imagination,  the  constructive,  its 
nature,  Kant,  130. 

"  Imitation  of  Christ,"  its  state- 
ment against  philosophy,  5  ;  its 
contemplative  religious  mood,  51- 
54 ;  parallel  between  the  religious 
consciousness  of  its  author  and  of 
Spinoza,  54,  69. 

Induction,  the  method  of,  Galileo, 
38-40 ;  marvelous,  of  Darwin,  285. 

Infinite,  the,  pervades  the  finite, 
139-145.  See  Idealism. 

"  In  Memoriam,"  246. 

Inner  life,  period  of  the  study  of  the, 
from  Locke  to  Kant,  68,  474 ;  its 
general  characteristics,  68-74, 475. 

Insight,  novelty  of  Kant's,  114,  115. 

Intellect,  will  deeper  than,  Schopen- 
hauer, 252. 

Irrtttionalismus,  doctrine  of,  237—239. 

Jena,  a  literary  centre  during  the 

romantic  era,  170. 
Jew,  Spinoza  a,  by  birth,  44. 

Kant,  mission  of,  in  modern  thought, 
34,  35,  75,  100,  135 ;  difficulties  in 
the  study  of,  103-105 ;  his  person 
and  life,  106— 109  •,  consistent  de- 
velopment of  his  religious  belief, 
110,  111;  his  piety  contrasted 
•with  Spinoza's  mysticism,  111,  112, 
114,  134 ;  the  moral  law  revealed 
by  conscience,  112-114;  faith  not 
a  dogma,  but  an  active  postulate, 
114-118,433;  his  early  philosoph- 


ical development,  119-122;  the 
subjectivity  of  space  and  time, 
122-124;  awakened  from  "dog- 
matic slumber  "  by  Hume's  skepti- 
cism, 93,  102,  125,  126;  his  "Cri- 
tique of  Pure  Reason,"  34,  102, 
126, 476,483;  laws  of  nature  must 
conform  to  laws  of  thought,  126, 
127 ;  the  transcendental  unity  of 
apperception,  128,  487-491;  the 
constructive  imagination,  129, 130 ; 
deduction  of  the  categories,  128, 
131,  483-491 ;  absolute  certainty 
of  the  moral  law,  132,  133 ;  out- 
come of  his  doctrine,  134-139 ;  its 
transformation  the  common  task 
of  post-Kantian  German  idealists, 
139-145 ;  Fichte,  and,  150,  151, 
154;  Schelling,  and,  193,  217; 
Hegel,  and,  201,  204,  217 ;  Scho- 
penhauer, and,  237-239,  253,  265, 
266 ;  his  influence  upon  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  271, 286.  Sum- 
mary of  lecture,  books,  and  doc- 
trine, 476,  477.  See  Deduction  of 
the  categories. 

Kirchoff,  "  Vorlesungen  iiber  Mathe* 
matische  Physik  "  by,  cited,  398. 

Knowledge,  a  scrutiny  of  its  basis 
demanded,  by  Locke,  83 ;  by  Kant, 
125 ;  in  modern  problems,  339. 

Konigsberg,  birthplace  of  Kant,  106 ; 
Kantian  archives  in,  120. 

Lagrange,  272. 

Lange,  F.  A.,  his  criticism  of  meta- 
physicians, 4. 

Lanier,  Sidney,  his  poem  "  How 
Love  looked  for  Hell,"  442;  ex- 
presses a  false  religious  optimism, 
443-445. 

Language,  nature  a  divine,  Berkeley, 
91. 

Laplace,  nebular  hypothesis  of,  106, 
110;  his  "Celestial  Mechanics," 
272. 

Law,  sanction  of,  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  31 ;  laws  of  nature,  Berke- 
ley, 91 ;  Kant,  126 ;  moral,  cer- 
tainty of,  Kant,  132,  133;  the 
universe  its  embodiment,  Fichte, 
152,  159, 160, 166,  167, 174, 191. 

Lectures,  general  purposes  of,  the,  1, 
473 ;  studies  of  thinkers  and  prob- 
lems, 25  ;  suggestions  of  doctrine, 
309;  summary  of  the  historical, 
473-480;  of  the  positive,  480-482, 


INDEX. 


513 


Leibnitz,  historical  position  of,  83, 
70 ;  his  philosophical  theology,  71 ; 
his  monadology,  409;  his  opti- 
mism, 440. 

Leasing,  the  forerunner  of  classical 
German  literature,  169. 

Life,  inner,  period  of  its  rediscovery, 
Spinoza  to  Kant,  68-100,  274, 475 ; 
an  embodiment  of  God's  life,  with 
Fichte,  144,  145;  with  Schelling, 
186 ;  paradoxes  of  the,  Hegel,  204- 
210;  the  will,  Schopenhauer,  254- 
256 ;  a  deeper  self,  372-374,  470. 

Lisbon,  earthquake  in,  A.  D.  1758,  70. 

Literature,  German,  classical  period, 
166-170. 

Locke,  second  period  of  modern 
philosophy  begins  with,  33 ;  his 
career  and  character,  78  ;  origin  of 
his  ' '  Essay  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing," 79-80;  historical  value 
of  his  insistence  upon  a  knowledge 
of  the  scope  of  human  reason, 
80-82;  ideas  not  innate,  79,  82; 
their  origin  in  sensation  and  reflec- 
tion, 83,  84;  his  influence  upon 
the  study  of  the  inner  life,  84-86. 
See  pages  474,  475. 

Logic,  the  world  not  explained  by, 
of  seventeenth  century,  Kant, 
119,  120;  categories  of  Hegel's 
"  Logic,"  218 ;  its  dialetical 
method,  219-222 ;  its  universal 
Idee,  222-226,  492-506. 

Logos,  the,  tiie  deeper  self,  372-380 ; 
evolution  in  the  universe  of,  381 ; 
the  world  of  description  real  as  an 
aspect  of,  408, 416, 422 ;  the  world 
of  appreciation  is  the  system  of 
the  thoughts  of,  415-434, 454-461 ; 
this  world  the  choice  of  a  rational, 
437,  439,  440,  469-471. 

Lombroso,  the  Italian  psychologist, 
242. 

Love,  false  optimistic,  in  a  poem  of 
Lanier,  442^147. 

Love-letters  of  Fichte,  147-150. 

Lyull,  285. 

Mach,  "  Die  Mechanik  in  ihrer  Ent- 
wickelung  "  by,  398. 

Man,  regarded  as  a  mechanism,  in 
seventeenth  century,  28 ;  if  such, 
a  knowing  mechanism,  in  the  sec- 
ond period,  82 ;  two  forms  of  his 
religious  interest,  45,  46.  See 
Life. 


Martineau,  "Study  of  Spinoza"  by, 
475. 

Matter,  an  expression  of  the  divine 
substance,  Spinoza,  63-65 ;  proof 
of  its  existence,  Descartes,  76 ; 
causes  sensations,  Locke,  83 ;  a 
world  of  ideas,  Berkeley,  87,  92 ; 
laws  of,  must  conform  to  laws  of 
thought,  Kant,  122, 125, 181 ;  "  the 
material  for  our  duty,"  Fichte, 
152 ;  "  permanent  possibilities  of 
experience,"  Mill,  359 ;  an  external 
aspect  of  the  Logos,  415-419. 

Maximos,  in  Ibsen's  "  Emperor  and 
Galilean,"  37. 

Meaning,  analysis  of,  370,  371. 

Meiklejohn,  his  translation  of  Kant's 
"Critique  of  Pure  Reason,"  102, 
174. 

Memory,  paradox  of  consciousness 
illustrated  by,  205,  206. 

Metaphysics,  value  of,  22—24 ;  Kant 
"a  lover  of,"  120. 

Metempsychosis,  a  new  form  of,  283. 

Method,  mathematical,  of  Spinoza, 
58-60 ;  dissatisfaction  with,  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  69,  93 ;  ana- 
lytic and  synthetic  methods,  of 
idealism,  350,  351. 

Middle  Ages,  the,  the  typical  period 
of  romance,  278. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  his  definition  of 
matter,  359. 

Mind,  a  revelation  of  the  divine  sub- 
stance, Spinoza,  63-66 ;  its  innate 
truth,  Descartes,  75,  76 ;  a  blank 
tablet,  written  on  by  experience- 
Locke,  74, 79-86 ;  one  omnipresent, 
Berkeley,  91 ;  the  world  of  appre- 
ciation, 368,  415-419. 

Mind-stuff,  theory  of,  Clifford  and 
Dr.  Prince,  300-304,  415. 

Miracles,  denied,  Spinoza,  29,  70. 

Monads,  of  Leibnitz,  409. 

Monism,  as  "  Double  Aspect "  doc- 
trine, 300-304;  applied  to  the 
world  of  the  Logos,  415-434. 

Mood,  the  skeptical,  71-73. 

Morals,  doctrine  of,  Kant,  112-114; 
as  *'  ethical  idealism,"  Fichte,  152- 
163. 

Mozart,  on  artistic  production,  456, 
457. 

Miiller,  Max,  his  translation  of  Kant's 
"  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,"  476. 

Music,  best  portrays  the  essence  of 
the  will.  Schopenhauer,  256;  ia 


614 


INDEX. 


Illustration  of  the  paradox  of  the 
moral  order,  456. 

Mysteries,  the  only  insoluble,  those 
absurd  to  ask,  346. 

Mysticism,  parallel  between,  the,  of 
Spinoza  and  of  the  "Imitation," 
51-55 ;  philosophic,  of  Spinoza, 
55,  66 ;  hated  by  Locke,  60,  83 ; 
Kant's  piety  opposed  to  Spinoza's, 
111-114 ;  of  the  historical  church, 
145 ;  the  pessimistic  type,  Scho- 
penhauer, 245,  246;  its  attitude 
towards  evil,  450-453. 

Napoleon,  defeat  of,  advances  the 
historical  movement,  276, 281, 282. 

Naturalism,  period  of,  from  Galileo 
to  Spinoza,  27,  474.  See  Galileo, 
Spinoza. 

Nature,  a  vast  mechanism,  by  Gali- 
leo, 38-41;  by  Spinoza,  58-66; 
laws  of,  the  order  of  ideas,  Berke- 
ley, 91 ;  must  conform  to  laws  of 
thought,  Kant,  122-125,  131;  a 
work  of  unconscious  art,  roman- 
ticists, 175 ;  Naturphilosophie  of 
Schelling,  184-189,  193 ;  my  duty 
made  manifest  to  my  senses, 
Fichte,  192;  the  philosophy  of 
Hegel,  218.  See  Evolution. 
Nature  and  Evolution,"  Lecture  X ; 
critical  study  of  the  world  under 
the  assumption  of  realistic  science, 
312;  its  changes,  "redistribu- 
tions "  of  matter  and  energy,  313 ; 
their  character  and  extent,  313, 
314 ;  suggest  a  general  process  of 
physical  evolution,  314,  315 ;  the 
law  of  the  "  degradation "  of 
energy,  316,  317 ;  this  cessation  of 
evolution  raises  question  of  its 
beginning,  318 ;  Clifford's  hypo- 
thesis of  a  definable  endless  pro- 
cess, 318-321 ;  the  cyclical  pro- 
cess, 322,  323,  334 ;  difficulties  in 
an  endless  process  of  aggrega- 
tion, 324, 325 ;  and  dispersion,  325— 
327;  avoided  by  the  gravitative 
system,  328-331 ;  the  endlessly 
consolidating  matter  not  the  ulti- 
mately real  world,  331-336 ;  fore- 
going paradoxes  due  to  a  hypo- 
thetical account  of  a  world -process 
in  terms  of  experience,  337,  338 ; 
necessity  of  a  critical  study  of  the 
knowing  power  of  man,  338,  339 ; 

,    permanent  lesson  of  modem  ideal- 


ism that  the  inner  and  outer  world 

must  have  organic  relations,  33y, 

340.     See  Reality  and  Idealism. 
Natural  science,  axioms  of,  relate  to 

world  of  description,  397-400. 
Natural   selection,  Darwin's   theory 

of,  285-287,  289. 
Necessity,  mathematical,  of  Spinoza, 

58-61 ;  its  conception  the  result  of 

habit,  Hume,  95-97. 
Negativitat,   Hegel's    formula    of, 

213-218 ;    less    conceivable    thar 

Spencer's  cosmical  evolution,  2D7. 
Newton,  his  conception  of  physical 

science,   274;    his    "  Principia," 

286. 
Nihilism,  the  outcome  of  an  arbitrary 

idealism,  180. 
Novalis,  his  character,  177, 178 ;  tale 

of  his  love,  illustrative  of  romantic 

idealism,  178-180. 

Objects  of  human  knowledge,  innate, 
with  Descartes,  77 ;  given  by  sen- 
sation and  reflection,  Locke,  83, 
84 ;  ideas  and  spirits,  Berkeley,  90, 
91 ;  impressions  and  ideas,  Hume, 
94-98 ;  the  meaning  of,  375-377. 

"Omar  Khayyam,"  Fitzgerald's, 
stanzas  from,  438. 

' '  Optimism,  Pessimism,  and  the 
Moral  Order,"  Lecture  XIII ; 
idealism  both  of  theoretical  and  of 
practical  interest,  435,  436 ;  anti- 
nomy of  the  spiritual  world,  437 ; 
(1)  evil  an  essential  in  finite  exist- 
ence, 437-439 ;  (2)  and  the  rational 
choice  of  this  universe  by  the 
Logos,  437, 439, 440 ;  the  problem 
of  moral  evil,  440, 441 ;  the  denial 
of  its  existence,  441 ,  442 ;  illus- 
trated by  a  poem  of  Sidney  Lanier, 
443-415 ;  results  in  a  false  reli- 
gious optimism,  445-447 ;  evil  a 
reality,  447-449, 458 ;  mystical  re- 
signation of  Spinoza  and  the  "  Im- 
itation," 450,  451 ;  pessimism  of 
Schopenhauer,  450,  452,  453;  a 
synthesis  of  "  perfection  in  im- 
perfection "  demanded,  454 ;  par- 
adoxes of  the  moral  order,  454; 
the  paradox  of  daily  life,  454, 455 ; 
of  music,  456,  457 ;  evil  becomes 
part  of  the  moral  order..only  by  its 
condemnation,  458-460;  this  solu- 
tion made  possible  by  the  organic 
personality  of  the  divine  Self, 


INDEX. 


515 


461  ;  the  mood  of  deepest  doubt, 
461-464;  the  tragedy  of  brute 
chance,  465 ;  illustrated  by  "  The 
Fool's  Prayer,"  Sill,  465-468;  our 
chance,  the  rationality  of  the  infi- 
nite, 469-471 ;  "  this  world  is  the 
world  of  the  Logos,"  471. 

Order,  outer,  see  World ;  moral,  see 
Optimism. 

Organism,  Hegel's  universal  an,  of 
interrelated  selves,  224,  225,  492, 
493 ;  the  world  an,  with  a  history 
of  development,  275 ;  a  manifes- 
tation of  the  Logos,  418, 419. 

Orient,  the,  records  of,  278. 

Paradox,  Hegel's  analysis  of  the,  of 
consciousness,  203-217  ;  of  the  re- 
lation of  universal  and  individual, 
218-227,  492-506;  Spencer's,  of 
evolution  and  the  unknowable, 
296-300;  in  the  moral  order,  of 
"  perfection  in  imperfection,"  437- 
440,  454-471. 

Passion,  the  logic  of,  Hegel,  219-227. 

Paul,  the  Apostle,  145,  402. 

Perception,  clearness  of,  Descartes, 
76 ;  by  sensation  and  reflection, 
Locke,  83,  84;  space  and  time 
forms  of,  Kant,  124. 

Periods  of  modern  philosophy,  27-38, 
134. 

Personality,  of  the  finite,  Kant,  131 ; 
of  the  infinite.  Fichte,  144,  145, 
161 ;  of  the  absolute,  Hegel,  224 ; 
of  the  Logos,  409-413,  434,  471. 

Pessimism,  element  of,  in  the  "Im- 
itation," 52  ;  in  Spinoza,  55  ; 
Schopenhauer,  its  reputed  expo- 
nent, 228.  See  Schopenhauer ; 
Optimism. 

"  Phanomenologie,"  Hegel's,  cited, 
207,  208,  225,  494. 

Philosophy,  not  an  effort  to  explain 
mysteries  by  any  superhuman 
insight,  1 ;  but  an  attempt  to  give 
a  reasonable  account  of  our  per- 
sonal attitude  towards  life,  1 ;  the 
result  of  a  natural  tendency  to 
reflect  critically  upon  life,  1-3 ; 
statement  of  the  objection,  to  its 
numerous  systems,  3,  4  ;  to  its  ap- 
parent futility,  5,  6 ;  the  defense : 
contemplative  insight  a  necessary 
element  in  civilization,  7-12; 
truth,  a  synthesis  of  the  various 
partial  reflections  upon  life,  13-17 ; 


criticism  accessary  that  worthy 
ideals  may  be  discovered  and  main- 
tained, 18-22 ;  its  systems  valuable 
by  their  record  of  spiritual  experi- 
ence and  by  their  bearings  upon 
life,  22-24. 

Philology,  influence  of  the  romantic 
movement  upon,  280. 

"  Physical  Law  and  Freedom," 
Lecture  XII ;  the  idealistic  inter- 
pretation of  the  outer  order,  380- 
383 ;  provisional  characteristics  of 
objective  truth,  384 ;  its  perma- 
nence, 384 ;  its  universality,  384- 
387 ;  its  describability,  388 ;  con- 
trast of  describable  and  appreci- 
able experience,  388-392 ;  nature, 
the  world  of  description,  393-395, 
397 ;  deduction  of  its  categories, 
397-404;  possible  reality  of  an 
appreciable  world,  393,  395-397, 
405 ;  ideals  and  organic  spiritual 
relations  real,  yet  not  describable 
facts,  405-408 ;  the  world  of  sci- 
ence presupposes  the  world  of  ap- 
preciation, 409-411 ;  its  categories 
of  self -consciousness,  411—413;  a 
world  of  freedom,  414,  415 ;  the 
"double  aspect"  of  the  world  of 
the  Logos,  415-419 ;  this  doctrine 
applied  to  the  facts  of  the  inor- 
ganic world,  419-422 ;  to  evolution, 
422-428;  to  freedom  of  the  will, 
428-434. 

Plato,  his  analysis  of  Hellenic  life, 
9 ;  Berkeley  and,  86,  87. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  gloom  of,  the  out- 
come of  wayward  idealism,  180. 

Pollock,  "Spinoza's  Life  and  Phil- 
osophy "  by,  475. 

Post-Kantian  idealism,  aim  of,  162. 

Postulates,  Kant's,  of  practical  rea- 
son, 113,  141 ;  of  science,  enriched 
by  an  idealistic  interpretation,  272. 

Process,  the  "cyclical,"  328,  334. 

Quantity,  Hegel's  category  of,  218, 
220. 

Rahn,  Johanna,  letters  of  Fichte  to, 
147-149. 

Rationality,  our  chance  the,  of  the 
infinite,  469-471. 

Realism,  the  assumption  of,  criti- 
cal Iv  studied,  311-340.  See  Nat- 
nre  and  Evolution. 

"  Reality  and  Idealism,"  Lecture  XI; 


516 


INDEX. 


historical  study  necessary  to  re- 
flective confession,  341-344;  ag- 
nosticism as  to  the  causes  of  expe- 
rience, not  opposed  to  idealism, 
344-348 ;  the  Logos  not  the  cause 
but  the  soul  of  all  reality,  348- 
350 ;  (1)  analytic  idealism,  351 ; 
the  world  of  knowledge,  a  world 
of  ideas,  351,  352  ;  their  stubborn 
reality,  352-354 ;  qualities  of  the 
sense-world,  ideal,  355-357 ;  its 
reality  known  only  as  a  system  of 
ideas,  357-360 ;  hence  a  universal 
mind  or  an  unknowable  x,  360- 
364;  (2)  synthetic  idealism,  the 
absolutely  unknowable,  non-exist- 
ent, 365, 366 ;  the  real  world,  mind, 
867, 368 ;  the  self,  meaning  an  ob- 
ject identical  with  the  larger  self 
that  already  has  the  object,  36S- 
373 ;  the  reflective  larger  self  real, 
in  case  of  truth,  375,  376 ;  of  error, 
376,  377 ;  of  doubt,  379 ;  the  unity 
of  the  organic  self,  373,  374,  379 ; 
the  Logos,  374,  379,  380. 

fteason.  human,  trusted  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  30,  69 ;  scrutinized 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  33,  6i) ; 
by  Locke,  79;  by  Berkeley,  87; 
by  Hume,  93;  by  Kant,  118,  476; 
theoretical  and  practical,  of  Kant, 
113,  141;  identified  by  Fichte, 
158 ;  principle  of  sufficient,  Scho- 
penhauer, 249. 

Reflection,  internal  perception,  of 
Locke,  84. 

Rediscovery  of  the  inner  life,  period 
of,  68-100, 474.  See  Locke,  Berke- 
ley, Hume,  Kant. 

Reicke,  "Lose  Blatter  aus  Kant's 
Nachlass"by,  121. 

"  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,'' 
cited,  373,  382,  383,  411,  414. 

Religious  interest,  two  kinds  of,  47- 
57. 

Resignation,  mystical,  263,  450,  451. 

Richter,  Jean  Paul,  his  characteriza- 
tion of  Schopenhauer's  style,  104, 
244 ;  of  the  German  empire,  108, 
156. 

Riehl,  "Der  Philosophische  Kriti- 
cismus"  by,  122. 

Romantic  school,  the,  in  philosophy, 
164 ;  doctrines  preceding,  of  Kant 
and  Fichte,  164,  165;  Fichte's 
arbitrary  ethical  idealism  supple- 
mented by,  166-169;  in  German 


literature,  169 ;  the  general  move* 
ment,  170;  members  of  the  spe- 
cial school,  172 ;  Fichte's  moral 
will  replaced  by  emotion,  173, 174 ; 
nature  a  work  of  unconscious  art, 
174,  175 ;  understood  only  by  men 
of  genius,  175 ;  the  philosophical 
attitude  of,  illustrated  by  life  of 
Schlegel,  176,  177;  of  Novalis, 
177-180 ;  Schelling,  the  prince  of 
romanticists,  181 ;  and  Caroline. 
181-184;  his  "  Naturphilosophie," 
184-187.  Summary  and  literature, 
478.  See  Schelling. 

Rosankranz,  Karl,  biographer  of 
Hegel,  195,  479. 

Rousseau,  self-analysis  of,  33,  79. 

Sanity,  the  idea  of,  128,  129. 

Science,  natural,  the  study  of,  7,  8, 
335,  338 ;  recent  advance  of,  35 ; 
coherency  in  the  world  of,  Kant, 
130 ;  task  of  idealism  in,  269-274, 
348 ;  unification  of,  Spencer,  296— 
298 ;  realism  and,  312 ;  the  realm 
of,  the  world  of  description,  387— 
397 ;  its  presupposition,  the  world 
of  appreciation,  410. 

Schelling,  prince  of  romanticists, 
181 ;  his  Spinozism,  41,  181 ;  and 
Caroline,  181-183;  Fichte's  doc- 
trine of  the  Ego  transformed  by, 
184,  185 ;  objective  idealism  of 
his  "  Naturphilosophie,"  185,  186 ; 
of  his  "  Epicurean  Confession  of 
Faith,"  186-189;  development  of 
his  doctrine,  191-193 ;  his  Identi- 
tdts-System,  193,  194  ;  and  Hegel, 
193,  194,  218;  Irrationalismus  of, 
237.  See  page  478. 

Schiller,  and  Kant,  103, 164 ;  quoted, 
142 ;  Goethe  and,  170,  171. 

Schlegel,  Augustus,  a  romanticist, 
172,  181,  478. 

Schlegel,  Friedrich,  romantic  critic, 
172 ;  his  romanticism,  176,  177. 
See  page  478. 

Schleiermacher,  the  theologian  of  the 
romantic  school,  172. 

Schmidt,  Julian,  ' '  Geschichte  der 
Deutschen  Literatur  seit  Lessing's 
Tod  "  by,  cited,  150,  478. 

Schopenhauer,  his  popular  repute, 
228,  229;  general  significance  of 
pessimism,  229-232 ;  development 
of  idealistic  caprice,  233-237  j 
his  idealism  on  a  Kantian  busia, 


INDEX. 


517 


237-239 ;  caprice  of  the  world-will, 
239,  240;  ancestry  of,  241;  his 
temperament  and  pessimism,  241- 
244 ;  Richter  on  his  style,  244 ;  his 
career,  246-250 ;  his  "Die  Welt 
als  Wille  und  Vorstellung,"  250; 
the  world  of  experience,  our  idea, 
25i) ;  space,  time,  and  cause,  sub- 
jective, z50,  251 ;  hence  multipli- 
city, 251,  252 ;  will,  the  essence  of 
the  world,  252,  253;  "That  art 
Thou,"  253-255 ;  art,  its  embodi- 
ment to  the  contemplative  intel- 
lect, 255-257;  opposition  of  will 
and  contemplation,  257,  258 ; 
Hegel  and,  259-201 ;  estimate  of 
his  doctrine,  261-264;  transition 
from  romantic  idealism  to  modern 
realism  in,  265,  266.  Summary, 
and  works,  479,  480. 

Scott,  i  nil  nonce  of,  on  history,  279. 

Selection,  natural,  Darwin's,  286, 
287. 

Self,  absolute,  the,  with  Fichte,  153, 
157-103  ;  with  Schelling,  193 ;  with 
Hegel,  224,  492,  493 ;  with  Scho- 
penhauer, 252-255.  See  Logos. 

Self-consciousnesfl,  the  desire  for, 
94,  165 ;  without  will,  no,  Scho- 
penhauer, 252 ;  paradox  of,  Hegel, 
204-217 ;  the  reflective,  375,  377, 
409,  411-414. 

Sensation,  as  source  of  ideas,  Locke, 
83 ;  all  sensible  qualities,  sensa- 
tions, Berkeley,  87-90;  "impres- 
sions," Hume,  94. 

Shakespeare,  Greek  tragedy  and, 
171 ;  quoted,  468. 

Shelley, his  "Prometheus,"  226. 

Sill,  Edward  Rowland,  "  The  Fool's 
Prayer"  by,  465,  466. 

Sin,  latent,  459 ;  actual,  460. 
^Lfikepticism,  philosophical,  nature  of, 
18-22 ;  value  of,  71-74 ;  true  atti- 
tude toward,  99,  100. 

Socrates,  Schlegel  and,  176. 

Solidity,  an  inference,  Berkeley,  89. 

Space  and  time,  forms  of  percep- 
tion, with  Kant,  152-156,  477; 
with  Schopenhauer,  250-253 ;  as 
system  of  ideas,  358,  359 ;  forms 
of  the  world  of  description,  398, 
412 ;  antinomies  due  to  false  ap- 
plication of,  to  the  world  of  ap- 
preciation, 420-422. 

Bpencer,  Herbert,  development  of 
hit  philosophy,  294,  295 ;  compari- 


son of,  with  Hobbes,  296;  with 
Hegel,  296;  his  synthetic  task, 
296, 297 ;  his  formula  of  evolution, 
297,  298;  his  unknowable,  297, 
298 ;  paradox  in  union  of  hia 
knowable  and  unknowable,  298, 
299;  fruitf ulness  of  his  system, 
293,  294.  See  Reality  and  Ideal, 
ism. 

Spinoza,  exemplifies  the  philosophic 
piety  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
32,  43 ;  opposing  views  of,  41,  42  j 
his  profound  character,  42,  43 ;  oi 
Jewish  ancestry,  44;  excommuni- 
cated, 44;  his  "  Theologico-Politi- 
cal  Tractate,"  45,  475;  hia  power 
of  dispassionate  criticism,  45,  46 ; 
his  adoration  of  the  divine  order, 
43,  46;  two  forms  of  religious 
consciousness,  46,  48;  (1)  the  ac- 
tive, of  St.  Christopher,  47,  48; 
(2)  the  contemplative,  of  the  "  Im- 
itation of  Christ,"  48, 49 ;  parallel 
between  his  mysticism  and  that  of 
the  "Imitation,"  49-54;  his  mys- 
ticism united  with  a  wonderful 
temperament  of  cynicism,  54-57; 
his  doctrine  founded  upon  geomet- 
rical methods,  58-60 ;  his  universal 
"Substance,"  60-62;  its  self-ex- 
pressions, body  and  mind,  63-65; 
his  description  in  the  "  Ethics  "  of 
the  wise  man's  love  of  God,  65— 
67.  Summary,  dates,  and  works. 
474,  475. 

Stephen,  Leslie,  "  History  of  English 
Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury" by,  476. 

Stirling,  J.  H., "  Text-Book  to  Kant " 
by,  194,  476;  "Secret  of  Hegel" 
by,  479. 

"  Storm  and  Stress  "  period  of  Ger» 
man  literature,  34. 

Strauss,  "  Life  of  Jesus  "  by,  282. 

"Substance,"  Spinoza's  universal, 
60;  the  characteristics  of,  de- 
scribed, 60-62;  its  two  knowable 
self-expressions,  body  and  mind, 
63-65 ;  in  relation  to  Kant,  134, 
141;  to  Fichte,  158;  to  Hegel. 
219. 

Sublime,  the,  Kant  on,  110. 

Tannhauser,  105. 

Tennyson,  parallel  between  the  moral 

world  of,  and  of  Kant,  113. 
Thalea    11. 


518 


INDEX. 


"  That  art  Thou,"  "  the  life  of  all 
these  things,' '  Hindoo  phrase  ex- 
pressive of  Schopenhauer's  doc- 
trine, 253,  255 ;  of  the  absolute 
Self,  307. 

Tniugs  in  themselves,  Kant's  doc- 
trine of,  125-127,  484,  485;  re- 
jected by  Fichte,  141,  152 ;  and 
others,  1(34. 

Thought,  existence  the  standard  as- 
surance of,  Descartes,  76 ;  theo- 
retical limits  of,  Kant,  125 ;  the 
laws  of,  the  soul  of  things,  Hegel, 
2^2 ;  reflective  self-consciousness 
necessary  to  uniformity  of,  and 
object,  375-380. 

Tieck,  Ludwig,  a  romanticist,  172. 

Time,  infinite,  anomalous  division  of, 
involved  in  Clifford's  definable 
endless  process,  327,  332-334 ;  its 
avoidance  by  a  suggested  "  cycli- 
cal "  physical  process,  328-331, 
334 ;  the  theory  of  c~  double  as- 
pect," 422-428.  See  Space  and 
Time. 

Tolstoi,  his  mystical  resignation,  261. 

Tragedy,  life  a,  Schopenhauer,  240, 
262-264.  See  Optimism. 

Trendelenburg,  "  Logische  Studien  " 
by,  479. 

Truth,  the  many-sidedness  of,  12-14 ; 
"  the  whole,"  14-15 ;  innate,  Des- 
cartes, 74 ;  a  matter  of  experience, 
Locke,  83;  its  divine  language, 
Berkeley,  90 ;  Hume's  doubts,  94 ; 
must  be  won,  Kant,  117,  129,  138 ; 
belongs  to  the  moral  self,  Fichte, 
152-156 ;  an  affair  of  genius,  the 
romantic  school,  174;  the  divine 
Idee,  Hegel,  224,  492;  describ- 
able,  the  outward  symbol  of  the 
•world  of  appreciation,  419-428 ; 
the  Logos,  374-380,  415-419,  471. 

Types,  of  men,  in  Spinoza,  54;  in 
Berkeley,  80;  in  Hegel,  199;  in 
Schopenhauer,  244,  245;  of  re- 
ligious interest,  46,  47,  86;  of 
pessimism,,  245,  246,  461-465 ;  of 
optimism,  446-450. 

Understanding,  the,  Kant's  cate- 
gories of,  131,  139,  483-491 ;  He- 
gel's universals  of,  492-495. 

Universals,  Hegel's  theory  of,  222- 
226 ;  the  Idee  not  an  "  abstract 
universal,' '  492 ;  but  the  organic 
totality  of  true  individuals,  492, 


493 ;  two  kinds  of,  493,  494 ;  thei* 
different  degrees  of  reality,  494- 
496 ;  Caird  on  the  higher  form  of 
the,  496-499;  transformation  of 
the  lower,  into  the  higher  by  the 
dialectic  processes,  500,  501 ;  sub- 
stance as  "a  simple  whole,"  502; 
three  phases  of  the  higher,  503; 
the  Idee  as  "Person,"  503;  ethi- 
cal application  of  the  theory  of, 
503,  504 ;  the  universal  Negotivi- 
tat,  505 ;  stages  in  the  study  of 
the,  505,  506. 

"  Unknowable,"  Spencer's,  297, 298; 
its  impossibility,  367. 

"  Upanishads,"  the  Hindoo,  quoted, 
253-255. 

Vaihinger,  "  Zu  Kant's  Widerlegung 
des  Idealismus  "  by,  quoted,  486- 
488. 

Van  Vloten  and  Land,  a  complete 
edition  of  Spinoza  by,  475. 

Via  Dolorosa,  136. 

Vision,  Berkeley's  theory  of,  87-90. 

"Vocation  of  Man,"  Fichte's,  de- 
scribed, 160;  quoted,  161. 

Wagnerian  Briinhilde,  257. 

Wallace,  "  Kant "  by,  476 ;  "  Logic 
of  Hegel"  by,  479;  "Life  of 
Arthur  Schopenhauer ' '  by,  480. 

Waterloo,  the  battle  of,  in  relation 
to  the  modern  historical  move- 
ment, 276,  281. 

Watson,  John,  "  Selections  from 
Kant"  by,  476;  "Spelling's 
Transcendental  Idealism  "  by,  478. 

Waywardness,  of  Fichte,  155,  166 ; 
as  characteristic  of  the  romantic 
period,  166,  176,  177,  186. 

"  Wilhelm  Meister,"  171. 

Will,  the  moral  world  founded  on. 
Kant,  114,  137;  finite  wills  the 
embodiment  of  the  infinite,  Fichte, 
159-163;  all  reality  the  will, 
Schopenhauer,  252-256;  freedom 
of  the,  428-434 ;  and  rationality, 
433-438,  469-471. 

Windelband,  "Die  Geschichte  der 
neuern  Philosophie  "  by,  232. 

World,  the,  its  unity  and  necessity, 
Spinoza,  60-63 ;  a  divine  language, 
Berkeley,  90,  91;  the  laws  of, 
laws  of  thought,  Kant,  126-132 ; 
"  the  material  for  our  duty." 
Fichte,  152-154;  the  manifestar 


INDEX. 


519 


tion  of  spirit,  Schelling,  192  ;  the  330-340 ;  idealistic  interpretation 

true,  an  organism,  Hegel,  225, 493 ;  of,  341-379;    theory  of    "double 

as  idea  and   will,   Schopenhauer,  aspect  "  applied  to  the  problems 

238,  250-253,   266 ;    paradox  of,  of,  419-484 ;  "  This  -world  is  the 

at  endlessly  consolidating  matter,  world  of  the  Logos,"  471* 


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